


if it feels like a home

by stonerbughead



Series: if it feels like a home [1]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Archie is a big puppy and he just wants everyone to be happy, Archie’s proposing to Veronica on the big trip, Bughead broke up after high school, Eventual Smut, F/M, Future Fic, M/M, Medicinal Drug Use, Mutual Pining, Recreational Drug Use, aka Lodge Lodge Shenanigans, bed sharing, but oh no they have to share a bed!, canon-ish through end of season 3, canon-typical levels of angst, joint smoking on the beach is officially my bughead brand, set 3 years after college, weekend getaway from NYC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-09-13
Packaged: 2020-08-23 20:08:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 35,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20209798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stonerbughead/pseuds/stonerbughead
Summary: “I’m proposing to Veronica on Cape Cod,” Archie said, gripping a little too tightly the glass of whiskey Betty had poured for him minutes earlier.Betty’s eyebrows raised, followed by a huge smile. “Oh my God, Archie! That’s amazing. Veronica’s gonna love it.”“Good, ‘cause I’m gonna need your help to pull this off,” Archie said warily.Betty laughed heartily. “Whatever I can do to make this perfect for you two,” she said. “You both deserve it.”Archie smiled, but a tentative sort of smile that told Betty he still had information to share. “I want all our closest friends to be there,” he said, and Betty’s stomach dropped, already anticipating where this was going. “So I just wanted to warn you...Jughead is coming.”Or: seven years after distance forced them apart, Betty and Jughead share a bed for three nights.***6th Bughead Fanfiction Awards Winner for Post High School***





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This universe is mostly canon through the end of Season 3, except Joaquin never came back and instead when he hopped on a bus at the end of Season 1, he ended up in NYC. (My version of Season 4/senior year includes no one ever hearing from the Farm again and Betty living with Jug and his family.)
> 
> “Power On” by James Blake is one of my favorite love songs released this year and i took lyrics from the song for the title and you’ll find some more lyrics at the beginning of each chapter :) 
> 
> Thanks to the lovely @elizabethbettscooper for the DREAM aesthetic for this fic! Yay Camp Riverdale: Session Two for bringing all of us lovely creators together in tropey goodness! Enjoy.

lovely moodboard by my love [elizabethbettscooper](https://elizabethbettscooper.tumblr.com/)   


* * *

_I thought everything could fade but I was wrong_

_I thought I'd never found my place but I was wrong_

_And where I least wanted to look, it came along_

  


~james blake

* * *

Betty’s been quiet for the last hour of their drive, and if she knows anything about her roommates, it’s that they’re ticking timebombs, lying in wait, ready to pepper her with well-meaning questions about her mental state at any visible sign of distress.

It’s fair, given everything they’d all collectively experienced before even graduating from high school. Given that Betty’s a relative orphan, her serial killer father long deceased and her mother MIA ever since the Farm fled Riverdale at the end of her junior year. It had taken years of therapy combined with a lot of journaling and taking up weed-smoking for the anxiety and subsequent insomnia, but Betty’s in a better place now. Really.

But tell that to Kevin and Joaquin.

Betty watches the clock above Kevin’s dashboard as he taps his hands against the wheel in time to whatever show-tune is playing from the aux cord. 1:00 PM. Joaquin has ceased his usual pleading with Kevin to let him queue up a song of the non-musical-theater variety. They’re only twenty minutes from crossing into Massachusetts, maybe an hour and a half from Cape Cod — of course, that’s before they hit the real traffic and join all the other exhausted vacationers traveling to the Cape on a Thursday afternoon in the summer.

Joaquin finally glances back at Betty and furrows his brow at her nervous expression. “So,” he says. “Tell me about this Lodge estate we’re staying in for the next three nights.”

Kevin and Betty both laugh. “Four cozy and impeccably decorated bedrooms, an expansive kitchen and living room, private bathrooms in every bedroom…” Kevin begins, complete reverence in his voice.

“Not to mention that the living room opens straight onto a private beach,” Betty adds. 

She’s been coming to Lodge Lodge for years now. In college, when Betty was at Columbia, Veronica at Barnard, and Kevin at NYU, they’d often taken Kevin’s car up on long weekends, whiling away days on the beach with marijuana smoke and whacky margarita recipes V found on the internet. If Archie didn’t have a gig, they made a real weekend of it, picking him up on the way in Boston, where he studied at Berklee. It had been a few years since they’d made the trip, as Veronica worked her way through law school and Betty and Kevin both settled into their careers. When a month earlier Veronica had proposed a group trip, Betty had been excited to revitalize a lost tradition.

Until Archie came to see her a couple nights ago in the Bed-Stuy apartment she shared with Kevin and Joaquin.

_“I’m proposing to Veronica on Cape Cod,” he said, gripping tightly the glass of whiskey Betty had poured for him minutes earlier._

_Betty’s eyebrows raised followed by a huge smile. “Oh my God, Archie! That’s amazing. Veronica’s gonna love it.”_

_“Good, ‘cause I’m gonna need your help to pull this off,” Archie said warily and Betty laughed heartily. _

_“Whatever I can do to make this perfect for you two,” she said. “You both deserve it.”_

_Archie smiled, but a tentative sort of smile that told Betty he still had information to share. “I want all our closest friends to be there,” he said, and Betty’s stomach dropped, already anticipating where this was going. “So I just wanted to warn you...Jughead is coming.”_

In the car, Kevin continues to enthusiastically describe the amenities at Lodge Lodge. Betty pulls her stress ball out of her purse and kneads it between her palms. _Dr. Weiss will be proud at my next appointment._

She has no idea what to expect from Jughead. The last time she’d actually seen him in person was seven years earlier, when they’d both conceded, tears in their eyes, that long distance just wasn’t working. She grips the stress ball harder. What will he be like now? She knows from his fairly limited social media use that he still wears his beanie, that the years have only sharpened and refined the boyish good looks she’d fallen in love with in high school. She knows he works in publishing, but she purposefully avoids asking Archie for more, afraid of what she might hear. 

It had never been their intention to be apart at 25. In fact, 18-year-old Betty had assumed she and Jughead would be headed down the aisle far before Archie and Veronica would even be considering it. They’d had a plan.

Betty and Jughead both applied to Columbia, hoping to attend together — Betty for journalism, Jughead for creative writing. Veronica was thrilled with the idea, as she was dreaming of Barnard College “to get a suitable education in the classics” before law school and Kevin had his fingers crossed for Tisch, which he’d decided was a necessary stepping stone on his path to manifest his Broadway stage director dreams.

But when acceptance letters came, Jughead won a sizeable scholarship to Northwestern and was flat out rejected by Columbia. A hopelessness overcame Betty. She and Jughead had been through so much together. Their relationship was the only thing about high school that worked, and now the powers that be seemed determined to rip it away from her. She remembered a panic attack in the Blue and Gold, Jughead stroking her back as he whispered in her ear that it was going to be okay, they’d overcome drug dealer moms and serial killer dads so how hard could long distance be by comparison?

Apparently quite hard. They’d become so used to living together for the entirety of senior year that being apart made them both on-edge and stressed out. In turn, it brought out the worst in them with each other. They found themselves getting in fights far pettier than any they’d ever had in their relationship previously. Their communication had broken down and Betty found herself missing who they used to be and yearning for their college years to go by as quickly as possible so things could return to normal.

By the time she visited Jughead at Northwestern for Halloween weekend, their relationship felt like a shell of what it had once been. They tried to enjoy the weekend together, but neither of them could shake the ominous feeling that this reprieve of happiness wouldn’t last. When they were together, things worked seamlessly like they always did. Apart, they were both miserable. It was an impossible situation.

On the last night Betty was at Northwestern that weekend, they had a painful conversation about how long distance wasn’t just not working, it was _wrecking_ them. Not to mention ruining both their college experiences. “You deserve better than this, Betty,” Jughead pleaded, tears in his eyes as he tried to wipe hers with the pad of his thumb.

Betty remembers that night only in bursts now, possibly due to the fact that her brain has repressed the worst of it. (That’s what Dr. Weiss tells her, at least.) But she clearly remembers saying, “If we’re meant to be, we’ll find our way back to each other after college. Right?” She remembers the softness in Jughead’s eyes when he replied, “I’m a pessimistic person, Betts, so it’s hard to promise you anything. But I really, really hope so.” She’ll never forget crying on the plane ride back, or how much she wishes she’d given him one last kiss. 

And then there was the fact that Betty never really gave up hope that maybe, if things were meant to be, she and Jughead would find each other after college. But it’s been three years since they graduated from college now, and they still haven’t even seen each other since that fateful break-up day. 

Since she and Jughead broke up before there was even a school break, Betty had generally avoided the town of Riverdale since high school graduation. She had no family left and her ties to the Jones family didn’t feel the same without her relationship to Jughead. Fred was even gone now, making Betty feel like there was nothing left for her on Elm Street. Besides, Archie, Kevin, and Veronica were Betty’s true family at this point, and they were thankfully all in New York with her.

However, Archie would sometimes accept invitations from the Jones family to come home for the holidays. Betty was hopeful when she talked to Archie after he went to stay with the Jones family over winter break their senior year to hear that Jughead was still single, as he’d supposedly been throughout college. Sometimes Betty wondered if Archie was lying to spare her feelings, if Jughead had become a playboy or found someone else who was perfect for him. Those were the darkest nights, when those thoughts penetrated her mind.

Not seeing Jughead for seven years, she remembers bitterly, wasn’t necessarily the plan either. Veronica had started a pact at the end of senior year of high school that all their friends would come back to Riverdale after they graduated from college, a little mini reunion before their real lives began. Although it felt like an eternity ago that they’d all made that particular promise to Veronica, this was the one place Betty was sure Jughead would come if he was still interested in figuring out how to make things work between them.

But he never showed.

A week later, Archie told Betty that he’d finally heard from Jughead, that he was sorry he’d bailed on the plan, but he’d had a job interview he couldn’t miss. He’d landed the job, and was moving to Chicago with Sweet Pea. Betty’s heart had broken at Archie’s words, though she’d tried to conceal it. After all, her life was put together, wasn’t it? She was already moving into her apartment with Kevin and Joaquin. (The two of them had reconnected a year earlier when they found each other in a gay bar. They’d been contentedly dating ever since, picking up right where they left off all those years ago.) Betty loved living with Kevin and Joaquin, and she landed a job at _Teen Vogue_ later that summer. Archie moved to New York right after graduation to be with Veronica after doing long distance all through college. Betty figured that was it. Jughead was in Chicago, she was in New York. He’d surely find a partner perfectly suited for him in his new city, and she’d be stuck — still too far away — in New York. 

All through college, Betty had only made out with a couple dudes at parties, feeling guilty and weird and...not right every time. She’d been on a couple blind dates and Tinder dates on Veronica’s insistence in the three years since college, but not a single second date. She still thought about Jughead late at night in bed, still missed him with every fiber of her being...but it had been so long since they’d talked. She felt ridiculous for pining after someone who could be completely different now, someone whose jokes and laughter and voice she hadn’t heard in seven long years. It felt like they had just...missed their shot, unable to get the timing right. (Oh, and of course she’d never told a single soul this, not even Veronica or Archie or Kevin. How pathetic would it be to know that Betty Cooper, a 25-year-old associate editor at _Teen Vogue_, was still pining after her first love she’d lost at 18? As Veronica would say, “very off-brand.”)

The depression had lifted somewhat a few months earlier when Archie got a call from Jughead after not hearing from him for a couple months. He’d gotten a new, better publishing job and was coming to New York, according to Archie’s heavy-handed hints whenever Betty visited Archie and Veronica’s East Village apartment overlooking Tompkins Square Park.

But when Jughead finally arrived two months ago, he hadn’t looked up Betty as she’d hoped he might. It seemed he’d only seen Archie one-on-one, having fallen out of touch with Veronica and Kevin when he and Betty broke up. Betty wondered what it would be like when they finally met again...

“Betty!” Kevin’s voice cuts through the circular thoughts that have been on repeat in Betty’s mind since Archie left her apartment two days earlier.

“Ugh, what?” she says, slumping down. 

“You look like you’re spiraling,” Joaquin says plainly. 

Betty sighs. “Well, friends, I don’t know if you know this, but I’m on my way to see my only ex-boyfriend for three nights straight after being apart for…”

“Seven years, we know,” Kevin says gently, cutting her off. “It’ll be okay. We’re all gonna act like adults so we can be there for Veronica and Archie’s big day. We’ll all be too preoccupied with keeping this secret from V anyway. I promise, everyone will play nice.”

“Yeah, Jughead isn’t one for drama!” Joaquin tries, twisting in his seat to face Betty. 

Betty narrows her eyes, ready to counter with just the first two examples that spring to mind, but Joaquin laughs out loud at the unmistakable look on her face and concedes. “Okay, okay. Jones was once a drama queen! _But_ Archie says he’s really mellowed out since college.”

Betty’s taken aback. “Archie tells you about Jughead?”

“He’s only told us things here or there, Betty,” Kevin immediately chimes in. “Enough for me to know you have nothing to worry about this weekend. We’re gonna have fun and he won’t make a scene.”

“Maybe you’ll even get along,” Joaquin says with a wink.

Betty shakes her head, blushing, as she worries her bottom lip between her teeth. “I don’t know what to expect. My mind has thought of every single possibility, of course,” Betty admits, trying to be honest without telling her roommates the whole truth. _That she’s a freak who’s been pining after her high school boyfriend for seven whole years._

Joaquin looks back at his friend with a sympathetic expression on his face. “Sounds like you need to calm your nerves.” He unceremoniously pops open the glove compartment and procures one of their pre-rolled joints from inside.

Betty manages a grin as Joaquin fishes around in his leather jacket pockets for a lighter. Betty and Kevin had endlessly roasted Joaquin for packing said jacket for the summer trip, but “air conditioning!!” and “I hear nights on Cape Cod get cool!” won the argument in the end.

“Are we in Mass yet, Kev?” Joaquin asks, absently flicking the faded blue lighter he’d finally located.

Kevin glances at the navigation system. “We’re like, literally a minute from the state line.”

Joaquin turns around in his seat to meet Betty’s still-nervous expression with his own gleeful look. Betty attempts a smile as Joaquin brings the lighter to the tip. He opens his window as the joint sparks up and the big, blue “Welcome to Massachusetts” sign looms before them.

“We’re in legal country now, baby!” Joaquin cries out the window, wind whipping his hair as he lets the smoke cascade out across the highway. Kevin lets out a whoop too after Joaquin sticks the joint between his boyfriend’s lips.

Betty laughs, the deep, ugly kind that only her oldest friends can produce. As Joaquin passes the joint back, she sticks her head close to her own cracked window. The highway wind tousles her blonde locks, released from their usual ponytail. She closes her eyes and lets herself surrender to the possibility of the weekend — all while trying to quell the tentative, Jughead-sized hope that has settled itself in the bottom of her stomach.

* * *

Betty hasn’t been to Lodge Lodge in at least three years, but she immediately recognizes the ice cream shop Veronica always uses as a landmark, and then the intentional bend onto the private road. They pass the neighboring monstrosity of a beach house, even larger than the Lodges’, complete with matching pastel tones.

Joaquin whistles lowly in the front seat. “Swanky,” he says as the beach house finally comes into view.

Both Archie and Reggie’s cars are parked out front, making Betty realize with a sinking feeling that they must be the last to arrive. Kevin has barely taken the key out of the ignition before they hear the sound of a door unlatching and swinging on its hinges as Archie comes barreling out the front door in their direction.

Joaquin and Kevin are already out of the car, embracing Archie and popping the trunk, but Betty’s been friends with Archie since they were toddlers. She registers the worried expression on Archie’s face before she even opens the door and gets out the car herself. As Joaquin hands Betty her weekend bag, she stands on the driveway, artfully littered with broken seashells, and watches Archie, waiting for him to meet her eyes.

“What’s wrong?” she says when her best friend finally looks at her. 

“There’s been a mix-up with the bedrooms,” he starts. “Reggie got here early for once! But...he wasn’t alone.”

Betty’s confused. Ever since they all moved to New York, Reggie and Josie have had an on-again, off-again romance. But last she’d heard, Josie had broken up with Reggie, as she was prone to do. Betty hadn’t seen them together — on the internet or IRL— in a full six months. And aside from Reggie’s usual intermittent one-night stands, there hadn’t been anyone important enough to introduce to the friend group in that time. They all thought Reggie was coming alone.

As Betty takes in this information and Joaquin and Kevin stand nervously behind her with their bags, the sound of the front door swinging open again pierces the silence. Veronica comes running down the front steps, immediately embracing her three friends. She finishes with Betty, letting her arm rest across her best friend’s shoulders for a moment too long.

“Reggie brought Josie,” Veronica says, ripping off the Band-Aid while patting her far more kind-hearted boyfriend on the back.

To Betty’s incredulous expression, Veronica shrugs. “They got back together.”

_Got back together._ The mere words make Betty’s face flush. Why should Reggie and Josie be capable of reconciling after the nonsense she’s known them to regularly put each other through, but she can’t even bring herself to break the silence she’s dying to break with Jughead and ask him to catch up at a coffee shop?

Archie and Veronica are watching her carefully as they explain the next part. In May, Veronica planned this trip as a best friends’ weekend getaway. When devising the guest list for the four bedrooms, Archie and Veronica assumed Jughead and Reggie could share a room, setting up a cot in case one of them got too squeamish to share a bed, while Betty had her privacy.

“–But now we know that Reggie and Josie got back together like, literally two days ago, which is news to all of us since they haven’t even made it Instagram Official yet,” Veronica is talking a mile a minute. “and Reggie failed to tell literally anyone, including Archie who definitely would have spilled the beans to me if he’d known,”— Archie nods feebly while Veronica takes a single deep breath — “And all of this, B, leaves you — unfortunately — stuck in the fourth room with the only other single person on this trip.”

Kevin and Joaquin’s eyes widen and they unintentionally say it in unison with Veronica: “Jughead.”

The next couple minutes are a blur. Betty nods and smiles and says all the right things to a well-intentioned but fretting Archie and Veronica, something along the lines of “it’s totally fine, we’ll figure it out, don’t even worry about it,” while inside she’s panicking, trying not to be too obvious as she scans the yard for Jughead. But he’s seemingly nowhere to be found.

Betty cups her hand and looks out at the ocean, visible from every angle of Lodge Lodge. Where she’ll be staying for the next three nights. In the same room as Jughead.

Gulp.

* * *

Veronica sweeps the group inside with a well-practiced flourish, insisting that she give Joaquin a proper tour of her family’s prized beach house. It provides a nice distraction for Betty, who drops her bag in the foyer and quickly follows Veronica and her roommates, providing commentary from her own years staying in the house.

Veronica finishes her tour at the bottom of the grand staircase, gesturing up the ornate, carved wood banister. “I trust Kevin can give you a proper tour of the upstairs,” she says with a wink. “I gave you guys the Blue Room,” she adds to Kevin, who claps his hands together excitedly. Soon the couple climb the stairs and Betty is left with Veronica.

Veronica purses her lips, watching Betty closely. Betty blinks out of her racing thoughts to meet Veronica’s eyes. She looks like she’s about to say something, even outstretching her hand toward Betty — until Archie’s voice calls frantically for Veronica from the direction of the kitchen.

“Go help him,” Betty says quickly. She knows better than anyone that Archie wants this weekend to go perfectly.

“Teal Room,” Veronica says before power-walking away.

Betty sighs and tugs her weekend bag over her shoulder. She climbs the stairs as slowly as possible, realizing that by process of elimination, Jughead must be ahead of her and already settling into their bedroom for the next three nights. She knocks tentatively at the slightly cracked door, feeling like a voyeur if she peers in without him knowing she’s there. _Now or never._

“Come in,” says that familiar, soft voice Betty has heard countless times in her dreams over the years they’ve been apart.

She pushes the door open, and there he is, standing at the foot of the king-sized bed with his back turned to Betty, seemingly rummaging through a faded, black backpack. Immediately, she registers that his shoulders are solid. He’s clearly filled out since high school, maybe even started exercising. Comfortingly, he wears a faded blue flannel and cut off jean shorts.

It brings out the blue in those eyes she missed so much when he finally turns toward the door. A grin immediately splits across his face upon seeing that it’s Betty standing in the doorway. She smiles too, despite herself.

“Betty,” he says, his voice dropping a bit as he takes her in.

Betty blushes under the intensity of his gaze, still just as bruising as it always was, like he can see right through her. He immediately moves forward and her breath catches when she wonders if he’s moving to embrace her, but he reaches for her bag instead. “Let me grab that?”

Betty nods quickly. “Uh, thanks.”

As she follows Jughead into the room, Betty realizes she’s thankful in a weird way that they’re alone for this reunion. Jughead puts her bag down at the end of the bed, and as she watches him handle her bag with such care, she feels instantly that nothing has changed for her, as she’d suspected all these years. The plain gray tee he wears under the flannel is filled out in a way teenage Jughead could have only dreamed of doing with his signature S t-shirts. All she wants to do is rip his clothes off and throw him down on that bed, as she’d dreamt of doing all those college weekends they’d come here and she’d slept alone, while Kevin went through boyfriend after fling after boyfriend and Archie met them from where he was studying in Boston, giggling with Veronica all the way back to her room from the hot tub.

“So…” Jughead says, turning his gaze back to his backpack. “Um. How are you?”

Betty is taken aback by the perfunctory question. She props her bag up on the other side of the bed to distract herself, letting the zipper slide open so she can search for a fresh change of clothes suitable for whatever restaurant or bar Veronica will inevitably drag them all to.

Jughead laughs then, rubbing the back of his neck. “Sorry, that’s a weird question to ask. Like, how have the past seven years been for you…”

Betty looks up at him to find that familiar, joking glitter in his eyes, almost like a peace offering. She can’t help but laugh too. “It’s okay. I don’t...think there are rules to how to do this.”

He nods, holding her gaze. “Look, I’m really sorry about this whole sharing-a-room-with-one-bed situation,” he says.

Betty shakes her head, trying not to think about what she’d like to do with him in that one bed they’re meant to be sharing. “It’s not your fault, no need to apologize.” 

“Well, anyway, I’m happy to sleep on that air mattress Veronica dug out of storage,” he says, gesturing to the limp mattress sitting on the floor in the corner of the room. “I think it was meant for an incredibly drunk and belligerent Reggie. I don’t know if I can live up to his standards, but…”

Betty laughs appreciatively. “Still not a big drinker?”

He shakes his head. “You?”

“Not really,” Betty shrugs. “But, um, we’ll figure it all out later. The bed. I appreciate...the offer though.” 

He nods, and for the first time Betty notices two little spots of pink burst onto Jughead’s cheeks. “Or there’s always those luxurious couches I spotted downstairs on my way in,” he says.

Betty turns back to rummaging through her weekend bag, laughing. “Knowing the Lodges, there’s some insane rich person reason you can’t sleep on those couches.”

“True. I’m kind of grateful to Veronica for introducing me to absurdly wealthy people and their ways. You know, so I was prepared for all the terrible rich kids I had to deal with in college.”

“Richard never got more fun?” Betty asks, remembering Jughead’s stuck-up freshman year roommate, who she’d met the couple times she’d visited Northwestern before they called it quits.

“Never,” Jughead says, seeming surprised that she would so quickly bring up the past. “He started dating his now-fiancée Cornelia right after we…um, freshman year.”

Betty nods awkwardly. “Uh, I’m gonna go to the bathroom,” she says. “Long drive.” 

In the bathroom, Betty splashes water on her face and squirts lotion into her hands from one of the fancy bottles displayed on the counter. “Pull yourself together,” she hisses at the mirror. _You’re still in love with him_, her reflection seems to say back.

Betty quickly pees, fixes herself up one last time in the mirror, and squares her shoulders to face Jughead again. 

When she returns, Jughead is putting his clothes in the top dresser drawers, his backpack now perched at the foot of the decorative armchair. “You can have the bottom drawers,” he says, nodding toward Betty’s open weekend bag. 

Betty nods with a polite smile as Jughead sits in the chair to get out of her way. She unpacks things methodically from her bag into the bottom drawers in an effort to distract herself from his solid presence. The tension in the room is palpable; Betty can feel Jughead’s gaze on her.

He clears his throat after a minute and says, “So...did Archie rope you into helping with his proposal too?”

Betty turns to him. “You too?”

They both laugh again, this time in relief. As if bringing up Archie was enough to remind them of the fact that they were once friends. “I’m supposed to keep track of the ring,” Jughead says. 

Betty furrows her brow. “I thought _I_ was supposed to keep track of _and_ bring the ring to the restaurant on Saturday night,” Betty says.

Jughead shakes his head. “There are two options here. One: Archie is so flustered that he accidentally assigned the same duty twice.”

Betty nods enthusiastically, grinning. “It’s quite plausible.”

“Or, two: he doesn’t trust just one of us to do this job alone, so he purposefully assigned it to both of us to ensure we don’t fuck it up.”

Betty shakes her head mockingly. “I’d be sad if he had that little faith in his oldest friends,” she says, though her stomach sinks a bit when she realizes this is the first time the three of them are together in seven years, too. When she and Jughead broke up, the Three Musketeers-themed childhood memories that Archie loved to bring up faded into the background as Archie maintained his friendships with each of his best friends separately. Betty had missed the three of them being together.

“Well, in any case, Archie is gonna be stressed out all weekend,” Jughead says. 

“No doubt,” Betty agrees. “I tried to talk him out of proposing on the final night of the trip when he came to tell me about the plan earlier this week.” 

“Same with me when he came to see me Tuesday night!” Jughead says immediately.

Betty’s eyes narrow. “He came to tell me about it Tuesday night too,” she says. “How many places can one Archie Andrews be in at once?”

Jughead shrugs. “Well...where do you live now? I’m in Bed-Stuy…”

“...Off the Nostrand Avenue AC stop,” they both say at once. 

Betty blushes. “Oh, shit. Where do you live?” 

Exactly two minutes and one Google search later, Betty and Jughead discover, both their faces bright red, that they live in the exact same neighborhood. Mere blocks separate their two apartments. 

“Funny isn’t it, how New York is,” Betty muses. “You always run into the people you least expect, but then you can go years without seeing others who live right in your neighborhood.”

Jughead watches her closely, making Betty again feel too _seen_ under the intensity of his gaze. “You’re the seasoned New Yorker,” Jughead says. 

She nods, realizing that Jughead had gathered up a pile of clothes while she’d been talking. “Uh, I’m gonna go change,” he says. “Veronica said something about a bar…”

Betty laughs. “Of course she did. I’ll change next.”

As Jughead turns to head into the en-suite bathroom, Betty’s heart is beating fast. Talking to Jughead still feels easy in a way that talking to no one else ever has. She gathers up the summer dress and makeup she’d retrieved and tries to focus on anything but Jughead as she waits for him to finish. When he emerges in a short-sleeved gray button-down and sleek dark jeans, she heads into the bathroom with her head down to keep herself from openly ogling him. They exchange awkward smiles as they brush past each other. 

Betty returns to the room fully made-up and wearing a beachy, yellow sundress and she swears she catches Jughead checking her out, but she doesn’t want to get her hopes up. She notices he shrugged his flannel back on over his nicer shirt, which gives her an urge to make some sort of joke about his always-faithful commitment to his brand, but she’s not sure if they’re there yet. Jughead opens his mouth to say something first, but that’s when Veronica’s voice rings out through the house’s intercom system. 

“We’re leaving for the Beachcomber in two minutes, friends! Drinks and seafood for everyone!”

Betty and Jughead meet each other’s eyes and exchange an awkward laugh for what feels like the millionth time before Jughead gestures for her to lead the way. As they head down the grand stairs, Betty is quickly swept away to say hello to Josie and Reggie and they lose each other again.

* * *

Two cars pull into the dusty parking lot of the Wellfleet Beachcomber. Vacationers stand outside pulling on cigarettes as beachgoers walk up from Cahoon Hollow Beach below to the beachfront bar that Veronica insists on visiting every time they stay at Lodge Lodge. (“Best seafood on the Cape, bar none,” she had declared in the kitchen before they split into two cars.) 

Veronica had pulled Betty into Reggie and Josie’s car, while Jughead had been ushered in with Archie, Kevin, and Joaquin. As Betty caught up with Reggie and Josie on the ride over and Veronica pointed to landmarks out the open windows, Betty tried to relax into the sea breeze. This was her vacation, after all. (Though as she unbuckles her seatbelt, internally she hopes she’ll have time to pull Veronica aside and confide in her once they get inside.)

The group piles out, Reggie letting out a whoop as he locks his car and settles an arm around Josie. 

“Who’s ready for margs?” Veronica calls as Archie immediately runs over to take her hand after locking his own car.

Joaquin makes a “come hither” gesture toward Betty with his fingers and she nods, backing away to peel off with her roommates and meeting Veronica’s eyes to give her the nod. Jughead stops in his tracks as the other two couples walk ahead toward the bar. 

“Where are you going?” he calls over to Betty, Kevin, and Joaquin, who are headed in the direction of the beach.

Kevin smiles. “Betty rolled one of her trusty joints, of course.”

“You still do that?” Jughead asks, his eyes crinkling at the edges.

“Yes!” Betty says proudly. She pauses before saying, “Come join us.”

He nods, smiling appreciatively, and runs to catch up to the three of them as they take off their shoes and start down the sandy hill toward the shore.

* * *

__

_“Dad said he thought weed might help with your insomnia,” Jughead said, pinching between his fingers the Ziploc bag of green buds Reggie had dealt him._

__

_Betty looked up from her desk, where she’d been studying the Columbia course catalogue in an effort to make herself sleepy, and rolled her eyes. “Melatonin, Chamomile tea, counting sheep, bedtime stories. We’ve tried everything, Jug.”_

_Jughead laughed, a sultry look in his eyes as he dropped the Ziploc onto the desk and wrapped his arms around Betty’s shoulders. She leaned back into his embrace, closing her eyes. “Don’t forget hot sex,” Jughead said in her ear, making Betty giggle and turn around to kiss him._

_“Smooth,” she said when he pulled back. “The point is, Jug, nothing has worked. I still wake up to the same nightmares every night.”_

__

_“Believe me, baby, I know. I’m right there beside you. Literally.”_

_Betty laughed. “What makes you think this is gonna be any different?” She glanced at the green nugs through the plastic suspiciously. _

_ Jughead shrugged. “We may as well try, right?” He pulled a pack of rolling papers out of his pocket. “Reggie was kind enough to demonstrate how to roll a, and I quote, ‘sick joint.’” He wrung his hands out, cracking his knuckles. “Let me give it a shot.”_

_Betty smiled as Jughead brought his desk chair next to hers, an arrangement that a trip to the local thrift store had made possible the summer before. (The lovingly worn chair had technically been a gift from Betty in celebration of FP formally becoming Betty’s guardian for her final months prior to turning eighteen.) They scooched until they were sitting side by side in front of Betty’s once-pristine white desk. They both burst out laughing at the sight of little buds of weed spread out on its surface. _

_It took much tucking and laughing for the pair to discover that Betty had the more natural knack for rolling a tight joint. With the help of a YouTube tutorial, a few frantic text messages to Reggie, and some mumbled curses from both of them, Jughead watched as an hour and a half later, Betty licked her first joint closed and handed it to him._

_“Did we do it?”_

_He beamed at her, studying the little joint in his palm. “Betty Cooper, what can’t you do?”_

_Betty shrugged. “I think I could do better,” she said. “Let’s smoke it. If it works, I promise I’ll spend this last summer before college becoming the best joint roller you’ve ever seen.”_

_“Are you willing to shake on that?”_

_“Absolutely.”_

_Betty and Jughead settled themselves on the window seat, pulling open the window that Jughead had climbed through years earlier to kiss Betty for the first time. They fumbled with the lighter for a minute before Betty breathed in deep and said, “Come on. We took down my serial killer dad, we should be able to do this.”_

_“I dug up Jason Blossom’s grave!” Jughead agreed, both of them laughing as the joint finally caught fire. _

_“So, how do we like, get high?” Betty asked as she watched Jughead put the joint tentatively between his lips. _

_She watched smoke exit Jughead’s mouth followed by a series of deep coughs. “Reggie said to make sure we breathe the smoke in,” he finally said when he caught his breath._

_Betty laughed, taking her own hit and widening her eyes at the weirdly comforting sensation of the white smoke passing through her lungs and then out again into the inky Riverdale sky. They passed it back and forth, coughing and talking and giggling in a way that soon devolved into sloppy yet passionate kissing._

_“Jug,” Betty eventually said from where she’d landed on top of him in their bed, the joint long put out on her desk. “I think it’s working.”_

_“‘Best joint roller you’ve ever seen,’” Jughead replied, yawning. “You promised.”_

* * *

Now, Betty pauses at the bottom of the hill to wait for Jughead. Joaquin and Kevin run ahead hand-in-hand toward the waves, laughing as the cold water covers their bare feet. Jughead nods toward the couple when he finally meets Betty.

“When did that start up again?” he asks as they meet pace.

“About four years ago,” Betty answers. “They finally got the timing right, and it just…”

“Fit?”

Betty nods, licking her lips. “You got it,” she says, her mouth going dry at the thought that Jughead is still capable of finishing her sentences after all these years.

They watch Joaquin and Kevin in a comfortable silence. The beach is sparsely populated this late in the day. Empty blankets litter the stretch of sand, their owners ostensibly enjoying drinks and food up the hill at the Beachcomber. The sun is just receding past the skyline, bursting out in warm oranges and pinks that Betty can’t help but drink in. It’s beautiful here, she’s always thought so.

“Shall we?” Joaquin says, dragging Kevin behind him and pointing at the joint in Betty’s hand as they finally come to join Betty and Jughead.

“Oh, yes, of course,” Betty says. Kevin cups his hands around the joint for Betty as she tries to light it amidst another gust of wind that sends sand flying across the beach.

Jughead kicks absently at the sand, seeming awkward in a way that reminds Betty of early sophomore year, when he didn’t quite belong anywhere. The joint sparks, and Betty offers it to him next, forcing him into the circle with the other three.

“So, Jughead,” Joaquin says, watching him take his hit. “Long time no see. What have you been up to, man?” 

Jughead shrugs. “Uh, settling into NYC mostly. I’ve only been there for two months, so just trying to fit in at my new job and everything.”

“Where do you live?” Kevin says quickly. Betty wonders if he’s trying to make it so Betty has to say very little or what. She feels weirder around Jughead with all these people around. Even earlier, when they’d just seen each other for the first time in seven years, it was as if all the history between them had helped fill in some of the awkward gaps. She finds herself sneaking looks at Jughead while Kevin and Joaquin alternately pepper him with questions about his apartment after he offers up the fact that he lives quite close.

After the joint goes around the circle a couple more times, Jughead is comfortable enough to break in with a joke. “So, are we all just gonna ignore the fact that Reggie, Josie, Archie, and Veronica have completely partner-switched about a thousand times over the years?”

Joaquin, Kevin, and Betty all burst out laughing. “Oh, we’ve discussed this extensively,” Betty says, passing the joint to him with a raised eyebrow. “But please feel free to add your own commentary.”

“Those four are a parody of themselves,” Kevin says. “How much you wanna bet they’re taking shots as we speak?”

Jughead looks incredulous. “Didn’t Archie and Reggie drive?”

Betty rolls her eyes. “Sure they did.”

Jughead tilts his head back and laughs. “Not much has changed with those two doofuses, huh?”

“Always one-upping each other and being loud,” Joaquin muses. “So, no.”

They all laugh. “So, what are you two up to?” Jughead asks, pointing between Joaquin and Kevin. It’s a welcome distraction from the tension settled between Betty and Jughead.

“Kevin is an assistant director,” Joaquin says, putting his arm proudly around his boyfriend, who blushes. “His last project was an Off-Broadway hit. He hates when I brag about him, but he’s gonna make it all the way to Broadway. It’s only a matter of time.”

Betty nods enthusiastically in agreement. “No question.”

“Stop it, you two!” Kevin says, wagging a finger at both of them. “They’re too biased.”

Jughead laughs. “Hey, I believe it,” he says. “On-stage murders and creepy cults aside, you did an amazing job with the Riverdale High musicals.”

They all laugh awkwardly, that inconvenient fact of their shared trauma coming up again like bile. “Out of the ashes of Riverdale’s musicals comes...Kevin, Tony Award-winning director!” Betty finally jokes in an attempt to break the tension, and they all laugh.

Betty rubs her hands across her bare arms, cursing internally when she realizes she left her cardigan in the car. Jughead notices immediately, meeting Betty’s eyes and exchanging a wordless conversation with her as he pinches the fabric of his flannel. She shakes her head but smiles her thanks. She feels strange taking Jughead’s flannel, even though there’s nothing she would rather wear. She still has one of his flannels tucked into the corner of her underwear drawer, another secret.

Thankfully, Jughead returns his attention to Kevin, who is now directing a question his way.

“So, how _is_ that job going? Publishing, right?” Kevin says, nuzzling in closer to Joaquin as another gust of wind blows across the beach.

“Yeah,” Jughead says quickly. “Thankfully the job I landed in New York is way better than my first job back in Chicago. I was essentially a glorified intern before, but I’m actually getting my hands on manuscripts now. So definitely a step up.”

Betty is mesmerized by his words, more interested in this than anything anyone else has said all evening, but she doesn’t want to seem too eager. “That’s great, Jug,” she says, chiming in with Joaquin and Kevin’s own words of encouragement. 

“And Joaquin over here has his mechanic’s license. He’s working at a shop now, but one day he’s gonna open his own,” Kevin says. 

“Really?” Jughead says with genuine interest. “I still have a bike, I’d love to bring it by sometime.”

Betty looks down at the little roach in her hand. “I think this joint’s done,” she says. “Let’s head in?”

Joaquin and Jughead fall into step discussing motorcycles, providing an opportunity for Kevin to grab Betty by the wrist and pull ahead as the four of them clamber back up the hill toward the bar. 

“Don’t think I didn’t notice you and Jughead’s classic secret language back there,” Kevin hisses at Betty.

Betty shakes her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t play coy with me, Betty Cooper. He offered you his flannel. You all breathlessly said no.”

“Thanks for the play-by-play,” Betty says jokingly but Kevin’s face remains serious. 

Betty shrugs. “Leftover instincts from being a couple, I guess,” she tries, but she can tell Kevin doesn’t believe her. She’s grateful that he lets it go for the time being as they finally reach the door to the bar.

“After you, Madam,” Kevin says dramatically as Betty curtsies and squints at the rows of crowded wood tabletops in search of their friends.

They finally find Veronica, Archie, Reggie, and Josie sitting around an unfinished platter of seafood with about a dozen empty margarita cups littering the table in addition to the full margaritas they’re sipping on.

“We got started without you,” Veronica slurs and Betty sighs internally. _Well, there goes any hope of finding time to confide in Veronica tonight._

As Kevin, Betty, Joaquin, and Jughead pull up chairs and join the foursome, Betty and Jughead are quickly placed at opposite ends of the table. Betty wonders if there had been any sort of purpose to the way things had shuffled out. She orders a margarita and a water and settles into conversation with Veronica and Josie. After all, Josie had been on tour for months and they hadn’t caught up properly in a long time. She listens to Josie’s stories with interest, laughing and accepting drunken pats on the shoulder from both her friends as the night continues. 

She looks up to sneak a glance over at Jughead and finds him similarly tolerating drunken bumps on the head from Archie and Joaquin, engaged in an intense conversation about Fortnite that Jughead seems less-than-interested in as he continues to nurse the first beer he’d ordered. Jughead catches Betty’s eyes and raises his eyebrows. She smiles, blushing, before turning back to Josie and Veronica.

* * *

Two hours pass before Betty can finally convince Veronica that it’s time for the group to head back. She follows Veronica to the bar to help her settle the tab, and then links her friend’s arm with her own. “Ready to go, V?” she tries.

“Hot tub!” Veronica screeches. “We should have a hot tub party at Lodge Lodge!”

Betty’s eyes widen with alarm as people from other tables look in their direction. Jughead meets her eyes and laughs out loud at her look, practically spitting out the water he was downing. His smile fades a second later, though, when Archie jumps up and down behind Jughead. “Hot tub party!” he repeats right into Jughead’s ear. 

Betty bursts out laughing herself at the perturbed expression that immediately covers Jughead’s face. It reminds her of teasing Jug in the Blue and Gold. Grumbling arguments over which movie to see at the Bijou. Helping him pick out her corsage for prom because it frustrated him and she didn’t really care that much about the tradition of it all anyway. It’s one of her favorite Jughead looks. 

“Guess it’s time for some good ol-fashioned Betty and Jughead wrangling?” she says, surprising even herself with her confidence. After all, she’s not drunk. She’d had the one drink and two glasses of water and even the high she’d been enjoying from the joint has faded by now.

“I guess some things never change,” Jughead agrees, meeting Betty’s eyes just before grabbing a half-empty drink out of Archie’s hand. “No more, Arch!” he scolds. 

“You take Archie’s keys and I’ll take Reggie’s,” Betty instructs Jughead, and he nods, immediately reaching into Archie’s pockets for his car keys.

“Jug, what are you doing?” he slurs. 

“Getting you home safely, bud,” Jughead replies, prodding Archie toward the door. “First step, walk outside.”

Veronica giggles as she watches Jughead prod Archie with her arm still linked through Betty’s. “This trip is fun!” she says. “I have _the_ best ideas, Bettykins.”

Betty laughs. “You really do, V.” She sighs in relief when she spots Josie and Reggie walking toward them from the bathroom, even if both their clothes are clearly haphazardly thrown back on.

“Ready to go?” she says, forcing Josie to make eye contact with her. (Awkward, considering Josie’s obviously smudged makeup, but Betty is nothing if not a good friend dedicated to her friends’ safety, at whatever cost.)

“Yes! Let’s go, I want to be in bed,” Josie says, whining as she leans back into Reggie’s equally-drunk form.

By now, Jughead’s holding Archie up with one of his arms. He holds his palm out toward Reggie, “Keys?” 

Reggie protests for a second, but one stern look from Jughead changes his tune. Jughead gestures dramatically toward the exit with his free arm. “After you,” he says. 

Betty smiles, watching him with amusement. Jughead turns around and tosses Reggie’s keys to her. She immediately catches them even as Veronica shrieks at the flying projectile coming their way. 

“Where are Joaquin and Kevin?” Jughead asks.

“They went outside to wait for us when Veronica settled up,” Betty says. “Let’s hope they didn’t run off.”

“Alright. Squad out,” Jughead says jokingly.

“You two are so good,” Archie says as they exit the bar. “Like, you’re both sober. And good at your jobs and...you solve mysteries.”

Jughead laughs. “I guess I can’t argue with any of that.”

Betty smiles from where she’s taking up the rear with Veronica. She realizes they never quite covered _her_ job when they’d been out on the beach smoking before. Suddenly, all she wants to be doing is telling Jughead everything about herself, everything he’s missed. It’s taken until she had him in front of her like this for the weight of how much she’s missed him to fully hit her. But right now, they have their hands full. Literally. With the drunk forms of their best friends.

When they finally emerge into the parking lot, they find Kevin and Joaquin slumped against Archie’s car, Joaquin’s face nuzzled into Kevin’s shoulder. “Adorable,” Jughead muses. “I’ll take these three rascals. You got the other three?”

Betty tightens her grip on Veronica’s arm as she notices the beach and gets excited. “Yes,” she says through gritted teeth. For a minute, she wonders if she should double check that Jughead’s sober, but who is she kidding? She sneaked enough glances his way tonight to know he only had that one beer and nothing more.

After some giggling and whining, Betty finally gets Veronica, Reggie, and Josie strapped into Reggie’s car. Locking the doors as a precautionary measure, she comes around to the driver’s side of Archie’s car. Jughead rolls the window down and smiles at her. “Yes, Betty?” he says in a tone that points out the ridiculousness of this entire situation.

Betty bursts out laughing. “This is so typical, huh?”

Jughead nods. “Can I follow you? I have no idea where I’m going.”

Betty feels his words in his gut. “You read my mind,” she says. “I was coming over to tell you to follow me. I’ve done the designated driving from this place so many times, I could do it in my sleep.”

“Aye, aye, captain,” Jughead says, raising his hand to his forehead to salute her.

Betty giggles and salutes back. “See you at home.”

She returns to the car and breathes once in, out. God, he looked cute in that car with that goofy grin on his face. And with that one lock of hair that always curls toward his forehead, just begging her to reach out and stroke it. _Focus, Betty._

“I wanna go home!” Josie whines. 

Betty claps her hands together and puts the key in the ignition. “Alright. Let’s hit the road, kiddos.”

* * *

When they’re finally safely parked outside Lodge Lodge, doors slam quicker than Betty and Jughead can keep up. 

“No hot tub!” Betty calls out as Veronica and Archie go running ahead into the house cheering and giggling.

She locks Reggie’s car behind Reggie and Josie as Jughead helps an unsteady Kevin and Joaquin out of Archie’s car. Betty and Jughead turn to face each other. “So, on a scale of 1 to New Year’s Eve senior year, how much do you think we’re gonna need to help these idiots into bed?” Jughead asks.

Betty bursts out laughing. That wasn’t what she expected would come out of Jughead’s mouth. “Water, aspirin, bed,” she repeats, like a mantra. “How do we get stuck in this position every time? I feel like I’m in high school again.”

“I guess some things never change,” Jughead says, meeting Betty’s eyes for a second too long before starting into the house.

* * *

_“I hate you, Betty!” Cheryl shrieked. “This is my car, and you should not be the one driving it!”_

_Betty gritted her teeth as she gently pushed her cousin into the backseat of her car to join a drunk and giggling Toni. “Believe me, Cheryl, I have no desire to drive your car. But Jughead has to drive Archie’s, and you are in no state to drive.” She turned to glance at Jughead, who was practically wrestling to get Archie into the backseat of his car to join an even-drunker Veronica._

_“Ugh! I hate Reggie’s house,” Cheryl pouted. “We should’ve had this party at Thistlehouse. Then we all could’ve stayed over. No driving!”_

_“Well, Cheryl, your wish might just come true,” Jughead said, coming to meet Betty next to the car. “Betty, the drunk lady may have a point.”_

_“Really, Jug? We’re taking advice from drunk Cheryl now?”_

_“Yes you are, hobos!” Cheryl yelled._

_“Everyone else’s parents are home. If we bring everyone back to Cheryl’s and crash, it’ll be the fastest way to be...alone.” He raised his eyebrows at Betty._

_It was true, the two of them had been desperately trying to be alone together all night. Everyone else had been playing beer pong and taking shots and generally making a mess of the Mantle home, leaving apparently not one room untouched for Betty and Jughead to sneak away to. But Thistlehouse had no shortage of rooms in which to escape, and that look in Jughead’s eyes was a promise of dirty things to come. _

_“Thistlehouse it is,” Betty said, swallowing thickly. _

_Jughead laughed and grabbed Betty around the waist before leaning down to give her a slow, tender kiss. “We’ll get the kids to bed first,” he said when he pulled back mere inches from Betty’s face._

_“See you there,” Betty said seductively as she slipped into the front seat of Cheryl’s cherry-red convertible._

* * *

It takes a full hour for Betty and Jughead to wrangle each couple and ensure they’ve all safely returned to their rooms. Jughead finally shuts the door behind them with a deep sigh. 

“Is this what parents feel like?” he says as he flops onto the bed. 

Betty giggles, slipping out of her shoes. “Probably.” Her face reddens when she realizes he’s on the bed.

Jughead notices at the same time and jumps up from the bed so fast one would think it was literally on fire. “Sorry,” he says in an entirely un-joking tone, his face reddening an even deeper shade than Betty’s. “I can...blow up the mattress.” He starts toward where it sits limply in the corner of the room, but Betty shakes her head.

“No,” she says, so firmly that he turns immediately. There’s a fire in his eyes that scares Betty because of how easily she can read it. She gulps audibly. “Just...we can share it. It’s huge, right?” She gestures at the king-sized monstrosity. The Lodges would provide nothing less. “You’re not drunk Reggie, after all,” she tries, but the joke lands flat on her tongue.

He offers a polite laugh, always one to please her. “Yeah,” Jughead finally says, his voice thick. “As long as it’s okay with you.”

“It’s okay with me,” Betty says quickly. And then: “I promise.”

They make eye contact, and Betty feels the weight of unspoken words between them. But it’s after midnight and her body is tired and she wouldn’t even know where to begin. Thankfully, Jughead moves to unzip his backpack and pulls out a toothbrush.

“Mind if I go first?” he says, nodding toward the bathroom.

“Go ahead.” She turns to her own bag, rummaging for makeup remover, a toothbrush, and a Xanax to still her beating heart and racing thoughts. 

She sinks down onto the floor for a second, placing a hand across her chest and taking measured breaths, like her therapist taught her. But this isn’t like a hard assignment at work or a flashback to the time of the Black Hood. Not like a panic attack in a Starbucks or dreams of being dragged through the halls of the Sisters of Quiet Mercy. This is an overwhelming feeling that it takes her a minute to recognize because, she realizes, she hasn’t felt it in seven years. It’s that feeling of being entirely and completely overwhelmed by Jughead Jones.

And it’s confirmed now. It hadn’t gone away. Being with him today felt like pressing play on a paused movie she’d been half-paying attention to. Awkward at first, trying to catch up on what she couldn’t remember and fill in the gaps of what she’d missed, but slowly she’s getting back into the rhythm. Is he? Does he feel this? Like nothing had ever changed between them?

When Jughead returns to the room a few minutes later, she’s managed to grab ahold of herself. She slides the drawer closed after retrieving a tank top and shorts to sleep in. “Bathroom’s free,” he says softly as he returns to his bag.

“Thanks,” she croaks back, her voice somehow cracked with disuse.

In the bathroom, Betty takes time scrubbing off make-up and washing her face. She tries to concentrate on each movement, each flick of the wrist and swoop of the hand, to stay in the moment. But nothing stills the thought of Jughead waiting on the other side of that door for her to join him in bed.

When she finally emerges from the bathroom, his lamp is on and he’s lying on his back, staring at the ceiling with eyes wide open. He’s positioned himself solidly on the right side of the bed, as if to make sure she knows he doesn’t intend to stray from his assigned half. Always the gentleman. Betty’s stomach tingles with warmth when she notices that he’s removed his beanie, a good sign if she’s ever seen one.

Betty grabs her charger and plugs in her phone before pulling back the blanket and carefully slipping underneath. The bed is so big that she manages to slide in without touching Jughead, but she can feel the heat of his body across the bed. She’s not used to it. After all, she hasn’t shared a bed with anyone besides a drunk Veronica in years. No one else had even come close.

Jughead turns to look at her in the lamplight. “Interesting first day, huh?” he says softly.

“I would expect nothing less from our friends,” Betty tries. 

“True,” Jughead says, smiling wistfully. Betty can spot so many memories in that smile. “Well, thanks for being there to wrangle with me always.”

Betty isn’t sure what to say, so much so that she doesn’t realize at first the significance of what eventually comes tumbling out of her exhausted mouth. “Forever.”

Jughead stares at her for a minute, an undecided look on his face. “Good night, Betty,” he finally whispers before turning to shut off his lamp.

“Night, Jughead,” she murmurs.

* * *

_After the trials and tribulations of last night’s quest, it felt eerily quiet in the once-Cooper, now-Jones house. Betty settled into the familiarity of her bed and watched Jughead double-check the lock before turning to gaze at her in the lamplight._

_“You okay?” he said softly as he shrugged his shirt off and lied down in the bed, immediately gathering Betty up in his arms as she automatically shifted her head to rest on his chest. Here, in Jughead’s arms, was truly the only place that felt like home anymore._

_“I’m...parentless,” Betty finally said, skirting around answering Jughead’s question as she tried not to think again of Penelope holding the gun to her father’s head, falling to her knees as she pulled the trigger. The sight of Kevin sitting alone in the cold and dank Sisters of Quiet Mercy, abandoned by the cult that had her sister and mother firmly in its clutches..._

_“Hey, we don’t know that,” Jughead said, cupping her chin and looking down at her, breaking her out of a spiral in the way he’s always been able to do, with his voice, with his gentle touch. “The Farm goonies could show up back in town any day now. Or, we can go find Alice. If she doesn’t turn up soon.”_

_Betty nodded gratefully. He was so good to her. “That’s true,” she said softly. “I just feel so alone. I...officially have no family left.”_

_“Hey, look at me,” Jughead said, his voice hoarse with emotion. Betty finally let herself meet his bruising gaze. “I’m your family. You’re gonna stay here, in this bed, with me, okay?” he said insistently. _

_She nodded, tears pricking at her eyes at the love she saw reflected back in Jughead’s eyes. No one else had ever looked at her like that, ever made her feel completely safe. “Okay,” she said shakily._

_“I’ll keep you safe, I promise,” he said, bringing his forehead down to meet hers. “Don’t you remember what I said in September? We’re partners. In all of it.”_

_“Always?”_

_“Forever,” he said, reaching down to capture her lips in an intense kiss, as if he was sealing the promise._

_As she settled back on his chest, she thought about how she never wanted to leave this place, the only place where she felt seen and safe and whole._

* * *

Betty turns to look at Jughead, her heart beating fast at the memory. His eyes are closed, his hand rested on his stomach in a position she remembers as his trademark from when he used to fall asleep on their bed doing homework after school. His chest rises and falls and she suddenly feels creepy for watching.

Betty shifts onto her other side, taking in the dark shapes of the furniture instead. She closes her eyes, trying to welcome sleep to wash over her too. The warmth of Jughead’s body, solid next to hers, feels comforting. Even without their bodies touching, his mere presence seems to calm her in a way that nothing else quite does.

Just before she drifts off to sleep, Betty has the same thought she’d had that night all those years ago, when the fear of a near-death experience was still so fresh in her heart:

_But what if your place is a person? _

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


_to be continued_


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> um hi so can i say that i am absolutely BLOWN AWAY by the response to this fic??? i'm so glad y'all love this angsty, beachy little idea as much as i do! so, without further ado, here's ch 2!
> 
> thanks for your comments and kudos and reblogs and kind words and readership! lemme know what you think of this chapter~

_I thought that I could hide my face but I was wrong (I was wrong)_

_And where I least want you to look, you carry on, carry on_

~james blake

* * *

Jughead wakes up alone. Normally, this wouldn’t perturb him. But when his body stubbornly rouses him at the early hour he typically wakes up for his 9-5, the second thought that enters his mind—after the usual “ugh human existence”—is a reminder that he’s sharing a bed with Betty Cooper.

He turns to find her side of the bed empty, the sheets wrinkled in her wake, the same way they always were after a full night of Betty’s tossing and turning in the bed they used to share on Elm Street. The first time he came home from college for winter break and found that FP had stripped the baby pink sheets, replacing them with a dull, jersey gray, he’d sunk to his knees and bawled. It was all too final. 

But maybe, he thinks now, it doesn’t have to be.

Jughead stretches out his legs and turns on his side to check his phone. Just a few work emails that his out-of-office reply will take care of, a meme from Sweet Pea, and some annoying push notification he doesn’t remember agreeing to. It’s a little before 8 am. If he had to hazard a guess, he and Betty—wherever she is—are the only ones awake. The thought fills him with a feeling that’s equal parts fearful and hopeful. 

It’d been incredibly difficult not to give into his instincts last night to traverse the inches of blanket that separated them and wrap Betty in his arms. Even seven years later, his body still remembers the way her frame molded perfectly into his, how breathing in the smell of her hair splayed out across his chest made him feel a sense of contented belonging. From Evanston to Chicago to Brooklyn, he’d never been able to find that feeling again. 

With a sigh he returns his phone to its perch on the ornate nightstand and lays on his back, staring desperately at the ceiling. In every silence of this trip so far, his mind has been filled with nothing but Betty. But that isn’t entirely unfamiliar—Jughead has thought of no other woman but Betty in his entire life. He realizes as he again stretches his legs out a bit (he has to admit, Veronica’s family does seem to specialize in incredibly comfortable beds) that this is the first time since he laid eyes on Betty again that he’s been truly left alone with his thoughts.

Jughead wonders how obvious it is that he’s still completely in love with Betty. To everyone, he guesses, but mostly to her. Can she tell? Can she read him as well as she’d always been able to? He’d tried to cover for his initial shock at seeing her again yesterday by helping with her bag, but God. _Betty. _How is it possible that she’d grown more beautiful? She curves now in ways he longs to know more intimately. Carries herself more confidently. The years have only made her beauty more...pronounced, matured, timeless. Sexy. 

Suddenly, he sits up and reaches for his notebook that he’d unpacked onto the nightstand the day before and quickly jots it all down. Cataloguing Betty’s many assets comes naturally to him—he’s been doing it for as long as he can remember, whether on wide-lined notebook paper at Riverdale Elementary or on his laptop in a booth at Pop’s, over a cramped desk in his college dorm or sitting at the window in a Chicago coffee shop. 

He could write about Betty all day, but it occurs to him that this window of time before everyone else awakes is finite. The thought has Jughead closing his notebook and pushing himself out of bed, hoping he can find where Betty wandered off to while it’s still just the two of them.

He runs a hand through his hair in the bathroom to somewhat manage the bedhead and pads down the stairs in his bare feet, pajama pants, and a t-shirt. The thing about Betty is that she’s seen him at every version of his worst. She’s shared a room and countless secrets with him. Even after seven years apart, he trusts her like he’s never trusted another.

It takes until he reaches the kitchen to realize he forgot to even put his beanie back on. On the counter, a full pot of coffee sits fresh on the coffeemaker, stopping Jughead in his tracks.

* * *

_Jughead woke up with a start to the tinny sound of something dropping downstairs. He immediately turned, panicked, to Betty’s side of the bed before he heard the soft intonation of a muffled “shit!” and his face morphed instead into a guilty grin. He pushed the comforter off and quickly padded downstairs, not even bothering to put his beanie on._

_There she was, the woman he was eternally in love with and blown away by. Still clad in a pink tank top and sleep shorts, in what was once her kitchen and was now theirs, a pot of coffee on, Betty gingerly moved around on her tip-toes, pulling out pots and pans, utensils and ingredients. Jughead had glanced at the clock on his way down, and it was at least an hour before FP and Jellybean woke up on Saturdays. But here Betty was, for the fourth Saturday in a row_—_not that he was counting how long they’d lived together or anything_—_up early and making what was certain to be a fantastic breakfast for the entire Jones clan._

_She spotted him while turning on her heel, realizing she needed milk from the refrigerator. Just the sight of his bedhead had Betty’s face transforming before his eyes as she shot him one of those soft grins that got him every damn time. He reached for her and pulled her into his arms before she could protest. _

_“Jug,” Betty whispered breathlessly when he finally stopped her in place and leaned down to capture her lips in a deep kiss. She moaned and pushed her hands through his hair as he walked her back into the counter. They stood there, languidly kissing, for a good two minutes before Betty finally pulled back and Jughead continued peppering her cheek, neck, collarbone with kisses as she laughed and wrapped her arms around his neck._

_“Jug!” she protested. “I’m making breakfast.”_

_He finally pulled back, smiling lovingly down into her earnest eyes as she played with his hair. “You know you don’t have to do this, right?” he said._

_Betty’s eyebrows knit together in confusion. “Do what?”_

_“Wake up at the crack of dawn to make us these elaborate breakfasts. Don’t get me wrong, it’s amazing. I just mean, don’t feel like you _have _to. You’re our family, Betty, and_—_”_

_“Exactly,” Betty said, interrupting him impatiently. “You’re my family. I’m just...doing what I’ve always known families to do for each other. God knows Alice made sure I knew how to cook a proper breakfast. I may as well pass on one of the only decent skills she taught me.”_

_Jughead laughed heartily at that, reaching down to peck her lips before pushing a lock of hair behind her ear. Betty never ceased to amaze him. “Fair enough.”_

_“Besides,” she said. “Have you ever known me not to wake up absurdly early?”_

_They both paused to think. “I mean, like, besides times when we’re passed out after life-threatening, all-nighter games of Gryphons and Gargoyles and murder investigations and other such traumatic events,” Betty quickly added and Jughead burst out laughing._

_“We really have a unique style of flirtation, don’t we, Ms. Cooper?” Jughead said, laughing as he hugged Betty to him tightly. “Thanks for making this feel like a home.”_

_“I want to take care of the people I love who I have left, Jug,” Betty whispered into his pajama shirt, holding him back just as close._

_Jughead nodded into the hug. When he finally pulled back, he smiled before cheekily adding, “But if you expect me up this early on a Saturday, you better pass me a mug.”_

_Betty laughed, already reaching for the coffee pot. “You got it, Mr. Jones.”_

* * *

Jughead stares at the thick black coffee, sitting still on the hotplate. She always makes it strong. Her ratios are never off. He gulps and smiles at the memory, mentally wondering which cabinet the Lodges keep the mugs in. It’s not a question—he could never pass up a cup of Betty’s coffee if he wanted to. In fact, some days he wishes he could turn back time, stand in that kitchen on Elm Street with Betty forever, just sneaking kisses and laughing while she made breakfast in the quiet before anyone else was awake. It was a time they had carved out for themselves in that year they got to live together, when everything felt so seamless that Jughead let himself hope it would never end. 

Back then, they both truly believed that they’d always be a family, uninterrupted. 

Jughead finally propels himself forward, opening sleek white cabinets in search of whichever Crate & Barrel mugs Hermione Lodge once pointed her finger at in approval. It takes him a whopping four tries to find an understated periwinkle mug with a pink trim. He grins when he notices a faint pink _VL _painted on the bottom. _Even Veronica Lodge has been to Color Me Mine? I guess Lodge Lodge is where they banish their least desirable dishes, the ones with human emotions attached to them. _Jughead tucks that zinger away for later, already picturing the playful pat on the arm Betty would give him before turning away giggling and tucking her hair behind her ear, the move she always does when she feels a wee guilty about laughing.

He pours himself coffee and returns the pot to its cradle before turning to face the expansive bottom floor of Lodge Lodge. The whirlwind tour Veronica and Archie had given he, Reggie, and Josie when they’d arrived the day before had not stuck. Especially considering he’d still been reeling from learning that Reggie and Josie were _back _together for what sounded like the fifth time. 

He wonders where in this elegant maze Betty liked to be in the early mornings, a time he knew that she found most sacred. With mug in hand, Jughead starts toward where he believes the living room to be as if on autopilot—even as he worries about what he’ll even _say_ when he does find Betty. Where to even begin?

* * *

_“I don’t know how to do this without you,” Betty said, tears in her eyes, as she faced Jughead outside his dorm. Waiting patiently at the curb for Betty was a cab meant to take her to the airport, and then, somehow, out of his life._

_“Me either,” Jughead admitted, unable to hide the wobble in his voice or the tears running down his own cheeks._

_“I don’t want to say goodbye,” she said, searching his face as if trying to memorize it. He felt the same way as he greedily took her in._

_Jughead shook his head, reaching forward to grab her arm. He couldn’t kiss her, was too afraid if he did that he’d never be able to let her go. But he could grasp onto her warmth one last time. “We’ll see each other again, Betty,” he finally said. He wasn’t even sure he believed it, but maybe if they both did, it would come true._

_Betty nodded. “Okay,” she sniffled. “I’ll hold you to that.”_

_“You better.”_

_The cab driver awkwardly came between them to help Betty load her suitcase into the trunk, and Betty practically collapsed into the back seat._

_Jughead watched the car drive away from his dorm in a full-body sob he certainly didn’t want his intrusive roommate Richard to see. _How could we have been so stupid?_ he thought. _Thinking we could both go to Columbia, spend our days writing and browsing bookstores and exploring the vast city for its own mysteries and our nights sleeping in the same bed? _Back in Riverdale, it had seemed so simple to dream it all up—a future. But distance was apparently the one thing capable of breaking their relationship that in so many ways was built on a foundation of closeness._

_“I’ll never stop loving her,” he whispered, to no one in particular. _

_No one—not even Archie—knew what he did next. _

_First he sat on a bench outside his dorm in the crisp October cold for hours, letting the chill seep into him. Then he stood up and, instead of heading to his dorm, he walked across campus with a purpose he’d never felt in his life. A resolute Jughead stomped into the bookstore, passing college t-shirts and cheesy stuffed animals decorated with college insignia until he found himself amongst the notebooks. _

_He stood browsing for a total of five minutes before selecting a notebook that reminded him of Betty: a simple, elegant, black Moleskine. Made polite small talk with the cashier who was in his freshman English class before leaving to wander around the quad until he found a bench decently far from any people he knew. _

_Then he started writing. _

_Not a story but a plan to find his way back to Betty Cooper._

_(Because if nothing else, Jughead refused to break a promise he’d made to Betty Cooper.)_

_Jughead wrote the lines in frantic black brushstrokes that he would come to memorize and brush his hand over time and time again in the years that would follow. It was the only time he could say that listening to Alice Cooper’s mad ranting had paid off._

Step 1: keep your head down. That means: study, get really good grades, apply for internships to build a decent resume, get your head out of your ass so you can actually network. Like Betty always says, don’t scare people away. Let them into my sardonic humor once they’ve gotten to know me a bit and can trust that I’m not a morbid serial killer. God, I need Betty back in my life. 

Step 2: graduate college so I’m employable

Step 3: get a job in New York City with said college degree and resume achieved through said attained networking skills 

Step 4: win Betty back

_Jughead was breathing in and out heavily when he finished, staring at the paper as he let his eyes well up with tears. He shakily took his phone out and sent a text to his weed guy before standing up and heading back to his room. He sighed in relief when he unlocked the door to find it empty, Richard out for once his goddamn life, and he quickly pulled out his luggage, stuffing the notebook into a corner pocket of his suitcase._

_Then, Jughead moved it with him_—_to every subsequent dorm room, home to Riverdale for holidays, to the Chicago apartment he shared with Sweet Pea for the first three years after college. And then_—s_hoved in the bottom of his faded black backpack_—_to New York, where he finally unpacked it in what he hoped was its final destination._

_There was nowhere Jughead had ever slept where that black notebook hadn’t followed him._

* * *

Jughead stands in a sitting room—which is _not_ the living room, but he apparently needs to pass through to get to the living room, _seriously where am I and where is Betty_—in Lodge Lodge and thinks that his secret plan has failed spectacularly. 

Ever since Betty had left his life, he’d developed a nasty habit of keeping secrets. Well, he guesses they’re the kind of secrets he would’ve once shared with her.

As he passes through the sitting room and gawks at what looks like a _purple _piano, he thinks of the biggest secret he’s keeping from Betty. From everyone, really. He wonders if any of them will bring it up. _The reunion._

The thought stops him, once again, in his tracks.

Because again, what no one knew was that Jughead technically could’ve come back for the reunion. In fact, his original plan had been to declare his feelings for Betty at said reunion. But the plan—like their first plan—didn’t quite shake out. He’d tried desperately to get a job in New York, still chasing the dream he and Betty once had to write and live together in the city of dreams. He spent the entirety of his senior year of college splitting his time between writing job applications and penning his BFA thesis, hoping that either a publishing job or a book deal could somehow propel him to stability and New York and then back into Betty’s life.

But nothing panned out. 

In May of his senior year, when he landed an interview for a publishing job in Chicago, he _had_ to go on it. He’d somehow nailed it and then found out they wanted him to start almost immediately—the week after the reunion. Just enough time to make it to Riverdale and then jet off to Chicago to start his new life, while the rest of them carpooled back to New York. (Or at least he’d surmised as much from the half-report he always got from a fretting Archie who was overly sensitive to both his best friends’ feelings.)

Part of him wanted to say “fuck it,” just move to New York without a job and try his luck. But he needed the money. Jellybean would be applying to college soon, and FP didn’t have enough money to support Jughead _and_ ensure that JB could get the education she deserved. He would have to take the job and work in Chicago, keep applying to jobs in New York and hope that one day the stars would align.

He spent two nights tossing and turning in bed with the decision of whether to go back to Riverdale for the reunion. In the end, he couldn’t do it, too scared he wouldn’t be able to return to Chicago if he so much as laid eyes on Betty. That week, Jughead refused to even glance at social media, fibbing and weakly apologizing to Archie on the phone when his best friend finally got ahold of him days later.

The truth was that there was no one else out there for him. No girl he’d befriended or who had hit on him in the years since he and Betty broke up had done it for him. Archie had tried once or twice to wingman him, but never pushed too hard. Maybe he saw it too, that Jughead was still in love with Betty. In the years since college, Jughead had started resigning himself to knowing that, if his plan failed, the love of his life had come early. Those memories would have to lull him to sleep the way her warm body next to his used to. 

Finally, Jughead wanders into the living room—the real living room this time—and there he spots her. 

Betty sits at a stately wooden table on the stone patio, directly outside the living room’s huge, sliding glass doors. (A patio that leads directly onto the Lodges’ private beach, of course.) She’s bent over a journal, her face screwed up with a familiar concentration as her pen glides across the page, a mug of coffee before her. 

Jughead carefully slides the glass doors open and pads barefoot across the cool stone. The Cape early in the morning still has a little chill to the air, the sun just hinting at them through the clouds. He scrapes one of the chairs back from the table and winces at the loud sound it makes. Betty practically jumps before her eyes light up at the sight of him. It doesn’t escape his notice that she quickly closes her notebook though, a stubborn reminder of the distance between them.

“Sorry!” Jughead quickly says. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Betty shakes her head, holding her hand to her chest and laughing. “No worries,” she says. “I should’ve known,” she adds. “You always used to find me in the mornings.”

He lets the statement settle into the air, looking out at the ocean. “It’s beautiful here,” he says, bringing his coffee mug to his lips.

Betty smiles softly, following his eyeline. “It really is, isn’t it?” she says with a sigh. He watches her readjust her legs so she’s cross-legged on the chair, looking positively cozy in a Columbia sweatshirt. “When we came here in college, I always used to get up early to get writing done out here before Veronica and Kevin woke up.” 

Jughead’s eyebrows knit together in confusion at that and Betty laughs as she explains, “They had a strict ‘no homework’ rule for these trips.”

He laughs. “Typical.”

“Please, sit down,” Betty says, gesturing toward the chair opposite hers with a blush. 

He quickly obeys, tugging at his head nervously, the lack of a beanie giving away the closeness between them in a way that makes him feel naked. “I see you picked my favorite mug,” Betty says, surprising Jughead with the knowing way she inspects the slightly jagged pink trim.

“Oh, yeah,” Jughead says, picking the mug up again and joining Betty in marveling at it. “You think Veronica painted this?” 

Betty nods. “Oh, I know she did. She told me it was from her archenemy’s tenth birthday party. Everyone said she had the ugliest one or something, but I told her it was my favorite thing I’d ever seen of Veronica’s.”

Jughead cocks his head to the side. The shining look in Betty’s eyes means she has a very precise reason for this. “And why’s that?”

“Because it’s so...perfectly imperfect. And it’s so rare to find that in Veronica’s life.”

Jughead watches Betty take a sip of her own coffee and shakes his head. “You never cease to amaze me, Betty Cooper.”

Her cheeks flame as she sips and he notes the green mug with a gold-stamped “L” she drinks from.

“You got stuck with a monogrammed Lodge mug?” he says, his eyes crinkling with amusement.

Betty inspects her mug and laughs. “Prime mafia content,” she jokes, giggling with her head turned away. 

They quiet down, sipping coffee and looking out at the empty morning beach. “So,” Jughead finally says. “You guys asked me a bunch of questions about my job last night…”

Betty smirks as if already anticipating what he’s gonna say. “And I somehow got away with not giving away anything about my career?” Betty guesses.

Jughead taps his finger to his nose playfully and points it at her. Betty throws her head back to laugh and Jughead swears he’s back on the Southside sitting in his old trailer.

“I work at _Teen Vogue_,” she finally offers up. She pauses before adding, “I’m an associate editor.”

Jughead’s eyes light up. He knew she was capable of greatness, but an _editor _at 25? Was there anything Betty Cooper couldn’t do?

“Jesus, Betty, that’s fucking amazing,” is what finally comes tumbling out of his mouth and Betty seems pleased to take in the genuine pride that covers his face. He couldn’t hide it if he wanted to, though he wants to ignore the dull pain in his gut telling him _I told you so._ _You had to let her go, she must be better off without you…_

“I’ve been overseeing a couple of our social justice beats, and it’s so amazing how much more of an activist voice has been injected into the publication in just the last few years alone,” Betty gushes. “It’s just so great to be able to elevate young people’s voices in a way that I wanted someone to elevate my voice when I was a teenager, you know?”

The earnest look in Betty’s eyes, the passion in her voice make Jughead realize that she’s telling him this in this precise way because she knows that Jughead can understand how much this responsibility means to her more than most. He’d lived out her investigative journalistic history right by her side, flashlight or knife in hand, Serpent jacket or suspenders on his back. He’d seen the look in her eyes when anyone tried to intimidate her out of writing a story. And now here she was, getting to see to it that others could find their voice in those pivotal teenage years. His heart aches with pride for her.

Jughead’s voice is thick with emotion when he finally speaks again. “Betty, that’s seriously...so amazing. Everything you deserve and more. All your hard work paid off like I always knew it would.”

She averts her eyes, though he can see she’s pleased at the praise, always has been. “Thanks,” she says, taking another glance at the ocean. 

“Um,” she says, and he can tell she’s swinging her legs in the way she tends to do when she’s anxious. Her hands are hidden from him, but he’d bet money that her fingers are curling inward too. What he wouldn’t do to make it okay for him to close that gap, cover his hands with hers, kiss her palms…

“Have you...are you...seeing anyone?” she mumbles, eyes still pinned stubbornly to the morning skyline.

Jughead’s face flames at the words, at the courage it must have taken for her to croak them out, at the way his heart stops at any indication she may be interested in him again. 

“I…” he watches her face closely even as she only looks at him out of the corner of her eye. “I haven’t been with anyone in years,” he finally says. There’s no other way to say it without telling her everything at once and he’s not sure he’s ready for that. Is this the place?

“Betty,” he says, and she finally turns her head to lock eyes with him.

“Can we talk about...freshman…” He’s just starting to close his mouth around the “y” in “year” when Veronica’s shrill voice rings out the door along with the swoosh of the sliding glass.

“Betty! I require your assistance in the kitchen!”

Betty starts at the sound, jumping to her feet and tucking the notebook under her arm. “I always help make breakfast,” she quickly explains to Jughead, shyly standing on the patio as if waiting for him to join her. He hastens to his feet and follows, his heart pounding as he wonders what would’ve been said if they hadn’t been interrupted. 

* * *

Jughead manages to get away for long enough to splash water on his face and throw on his beanie before returning to the bustling scene unfolding in the kitchen. Betty and Joaquin have taken charge, yelling directions at Josie and Veronica as they whip up eggs and pancakes and all kinds of good-smelling things Betty had once cooked for him in that kitchen in Riverdale.

Jughead sits at the kitchen island with Reggie and Archie, picking at the fancy pastries Veronica puts out for them and tuning out conversation about sports while he absently watches Kevin do sun salutations on the beach with a grin on his face. The background noise of Betty bossing people around a kitchen is like music to his fucking ears, he swears.

He feels a little bit like an early high school version of himself during breakfast, like it’s all happening to him and around him, but he’s not quite within it. He has a brief conversation with Joaquin, passes butter and cream to the appropriate people when asked, laughs at jokes along with the whole group. But mostly he’s hyper-aware of Betty. 

When Veronica is finally all settled at the head of the table, she begins dictating the day’s plans to the group, and Betty’s eyes immediately find Jughead’s; he can read the laughter in them and tries not to snort into his eggs. 

“—hit the beach first,” he vaguely hears Veronica say as he sneaks another glance at Betty, who’s now trying to pay close attention to Veronica though he can still see the laughter in her eyes clear as day.

“And then Ptown in the afternoon,” Kevin says with a passion in his voice that makes the table erupt in laughter. “You can’t bring _me _to the Cape and expect me not to go to a drag show.”

“Don’t you worry, Kevin,” Veronica says, beaming at the arm Joaquin wraps around his beau. “You two will have your romantic afternoon at the drag show, me and the ladies will go shopping, and the straight boys” —she dismisses Reggie, Archie, and Jughead with a flourish of the hand—“can fend for themselves.”

Archie and Reggie laugh and bump fists and Jughead sinks further down into his breakfast. He notices Betty giggling into her pancakes and he blushes in a way that reminds him of being sixteen again.

* * *

Jughead slips on his swim boxers in the room while Betty changes in the bathroom. He knows he could go ahead onto the beach without her, but instinctively he sits on the edge of the bed instead, waiting. 

The doorknob finally turns and Betty returns to the room clad in a tight, black-and-white polka dot bikini. Jughead blinks rapidly, unable to stop himself from staring. 

She blushes under his gaze. He clears his throat and says, “Wow, you finally integrated black into your wardrobe?” _Smooth, Jughead._

Betty smiles as she slips into her flip-flops. “I live in New York now, Jug,” she says. “Black clothing is required.” 

He laughs and follows Betty out into the hall, where she leads him to a linen closet he hadn’t even noticed. “This is where they keep the goofy beach towels the Lodges don’t want anyone to know they own,” Betty explains with a cheeky grin on her face.

“Wow,” Jughead says. “New York Betty is pretty cool.”

Betty smirks as she hands him a faded Mickey Mouse towel that looks like it was manufactured in the late 1990s. “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

In the living room, everyone is lathering each other with sunscreen. Jughead’s thankful that Kevin immediately calls Betty and Jughead over to help with their backs, as if sensing the awkwardness that would ensue otherwise. 

Josie pushes open the sliding glass door with an excited “Beach time!” and everyone trickles out onto the Lodges’ luxurious stretch of private beach. Jughead takes a moment to close his eyes and let the late morning sun overtake him. 

“Oh no you didn’t, Betty Cooper!” Veronica shrieks when they spread their towels out. (Betty had picked a fabulous Betty Boop linen to display next to his Mickey Mouse.) “You know how much I hate those towels!” 

Archie bursts out laughing and gives Betty a high-five. He turns to Jughead. “Were you in on this?”

“I mean, once I was alerted to the existence of these towels, how could I not be?” 

“Lodge Lodge is really the Lodge family’s own personal Island of Misfit Toys,” Betty explains to Veronica’s incensed face as everyone laughs. She throws an arm around her best friend to placate her. “I only kid, V.”

Veronica pouts. “Archiekins, let’s go in the water,” she says, blowing a defiant kiss in Betty and Jughead’s direction and taking Archie’s hand to run into the waves.

Jughead watches the way the pair of them seamlessly fall into step, Archie’s arms looping around Veronica’s waist the second they hit the water. The effortless look on both their faces as Veronica throws her head back laughing and Archie nips at her cheek. Josie and Reggie are right behind them, Reggie pulling Josie’s hand forward as they follow into the water with smiles on their faces.

And just like that, the same divide as the night before is created. Jughead thinks maybe he’s okay with it, though, when Joaquin turns to Betty and says: “Beach joint?”

She nods, a huge grin splitting across her face even as she solemnly replies, “Beach joint.”

Betty jogs back to the patio to procure the joint from the table, giving Kevin time to survey Jughead with a look that’s entirely too judgmental for Jughead’s liking. 

“You like what you see, Kev?” Jughead jokes though Joaquin shoots him an evil eye that makes him quickly add, “Just kidding.”

“It’s just been awhile since I’ve seen you, Jughead,” Kevin says, laughing. “Your taste in swimwear isn’t...terrible.”

Jughead decides to keep to himself that he’s almost certainly wearing the same swim trunks he’d worn when they’d all gone swimming the summer before college. Betty returns to the group with a tightly-rolled joint and pink lighter. She passes it off wordlessly to Joaquin to light, and Jughead wonders if this is ritual for them. He tries to picture Betty, Kevin, and Joaquin in a Bed-Stuy apartment, likely similar to his own. A coat of paint that was sloppily applied in the 24 hours after the last tenants had vacated, nice-enough-looking appliances that are definitely the cheapest on the market, a view of a bodega that Betty probably finds more familiar and comforting than he does. New York hasn’t quite felt like home to him yet, but picturing Betty in such an apartment, rolling a joint before passing it to Joaquin to light as Kevin cracks open a window—it’s a picture of a home. One that, if he’s being completely honest with himself, he’d like to have. 

“Your turn, Jug,” Betty says, her voice gently nudging him out of his daydream.

He shakes his head, quickly grabbing the joint she’s offering him. “Thanks,” he says. “Sorry, totally spaced.”

Betty gives him a knowing look and he shudders. How can she always see right through him? “So,” he says. “Tell me about this town we’re going to later.”

Betty and Joaquin both laugh and turn their gaze to Kevin, whose eyes have lit up as if he cannot decide where to even begin. What finally comes sputtering out of his mouth is, “Oh my God, Jughead, do you not know that Provincetown aka Ptown aka the town at the very tip of the Cape, is like, the gayest place on Earth?”

Jughead’s eyes widen at the passion and volume that had been reached so quickly. “I’m…sorry?” 

Betty and Joaquin burst out laughing as Kevin pauses to take a hit and catch his breath. Jughead turns to Betty. “I just dug my own grave, didn’t I?”

Betty laughs, accepting the joint from Kevin. “You most certainly did.”

* * *

It takes a good half hour for “the happy hetero couples”—as Kevin likes to call them—to get sick of the water and finally return to join Betty, Kevin, Joaquin, and Jughead on the sand. The joint long finished, they’re all laying on their towels playing music off Joaquin’s portable speaker and generally enjoying the morning sun. 

Kevin had been telling Jughead some of his most amusing New York City anecdotes and Jughead felt giddier than he’d felt in years. With the exception of one-on-one hang-out nights with Sweet Pea in their old Chicago apartment, Jughead hadn’t experienced this feeling in a long time. He’d never really taken a moment to think about the fact that when he and Betty broke up, he also lost the only group of friends he’d ever truly felt close to. 

But now his grin feels lop-sided on his face, his eyes feel relaxed and low, and his ability to give a fuck even lower. Glancing over at Betty, her eyes shut as she lets her head fall back onto the sand, he can barely contain his desire to roll over onto that ridiculous Betty Boop towel and cuddle into her warmth. _That bikini. _He can remember what her bare skin feels like on his as if it were only yesterday they’d pressed close to each other in bed.

“Jug!” Archie says as he reaches him on the sand and wraps a monogrammed L towel around his wet body. He has a knowing look on his face when Jughead finally snaps out of staring at Betty. 

“What’s up, Arch?” Jughead quickly says, trying to act totally normal and not like he was just ogling their shared childhood best friend slash his ex-girlfriend and love of his life.

“You down for a game of beach volleyball?”

Jughead groans to general laughter. 

“No groaning, Jughead!” Veronica says as she squeezes water out of the tendrils of her inky dark hair. “What’s more fun than beach volleyball?”

“How much time do you have?” Jughead quips. From beside him, Betty reaches out and gives him a playful pat on the arm. 

“Play nice,” she says sweetly and Jughead blushes. 

It doesn’t matter anyway, though, because Archie and Reggie have already started across the patio toward the hutch where the Lodges seem to keep their extra beach items. Kevin pulls himself away from Joaquin to help and the three of them bring the net and poles onto the beach.

On his way back to the shed to grab the ball, Archie glances at his phone and whoops. “It’s noon! You know what that means!”

Josie and Reggie both cheer. Jughead shoots Betty a look of confusion, but she’s already rolling her eyes back at him. 

“Beer time!” Reggie bellows. He high-fives Archie, who darts over to a cooler Jughead had previously assumed held water and retrieves cans of beer. Joaquin and Kevin both gravitate toward the alcohol and the beach soon fills with the sound of cans bursting open. Betty and Jughead resign themselves to getting off the blanket and standing with the group on the patio. Jughead grabs a handful of chips out of a bag sitting on the table just for something to do with his hands.

“Don’t go too crazy,” Veronica warns, looking pointedly at a guilty-looking Archie and Reggie even as she holds a beer in her hand. “We need at least two sober drivers for when we go to Ptown in a couple hours.”

Betty and Jughead exchange an eye roll. After refusing a beer from Kevin, Jughead turns to Betty to make a joke about betting money on the two of them being forced to DD two nights in a row, but he’s disappointed to find that Archie and Reggie have pulled her into their madness, asking her to referee their beer-chugging contest.

Jughead watches Betty stand in front of these two loveable yet ridiculous jocks with arms across her chest and a bemused look on her face. His pants tighten at the way her crossed arms push her breasts together in that tight polka dot bikini. He quickly averts his eyes toward the ocean, trying to think of anything but his memories of Betty’s breasts heaving underneath his weight..._goddammit._

All in all, though, Betty seems to be acting fairly normal around him, despite the fact that she’d been willing to let her guard down for a second when they were alone earlier. He wonders if and when that conversation they didn’t quite get to start will continue. 

When a reasonable amount of time has passed, Jughead returns his gaze to Betty. Kevin is standing next to her now as they both laugh at Reggie and Archie, and Jughead feels terrified that his view of all of this is fleeting.

* * *

_They took FP’s car to the party because Betty didn’t want to drink. She claimed she was just not in the mood, though Jughead thought she was more likely afraid of the emotions that alcohol would bring up. Last weekend they’d commemorated one of the first warm weekends of the season sharing a couple bottles of wine with Archie and Veronica on the bank of Sweetwater River, and Betty had burst into tears about she and Jughead’s impending long-distance. _

_It was mid-April, and as the May 1 college decision deadline loomed closer, both Jughead and Betty’s anxiety was increasing. In fact, Jughead had suggested they avoid this latest Thistlehouse throwdown altogether, reminding Betty that Cheryl was sure to throw countless more shindigs in their final months before heading off to college. But Betty had insisted, and, as always, Jughead would do anything to make her happy._

_Betty put the car into park, but instead of taking off her seatbelt, kept her hands on the wheel as she stared anxiously at their many classmates climbing out of vehicles, slamming the door to Ubers, and starting across the lawn toward the already-hopping party. Jughead watched her with concern._

_“Betty, maybe we shouldn’t go to this party after all,” he said after a minute, reaching gently for her arm._

_Betty shook her head, finally unclipping her seatbelt and turning her gaze to Jughead with tears in her eyes. “We only have so much time left, Jug,” she said. “To be normal high schoolers doing normal high school things with each other. Which feels more important now that we probably won’t be doing any normal college things together.” _

_Jughead’s heart sank at the thought. All those plans they’d made, down the drain with the mere click of a button on a college admissions portal. “But maybe we should deal with that at home, Betty,” he said. “Maybe it’s all too much when all these thoughts about our future are swirling around in our heads. I know it’s driving me crazy and I can see it’s affecting you too.”_

_Betty let out a huge sigh and wiped tears from her eyes. “You’re right,” she said. “I can’t stop thinking about us being apart. How scared I am to sleep without you. But there’s another thought I’ve been having too.”_

_Jughead cocked his head to the side. “What’s that?”_

_Betty allowed a smile to split across her face. “That we’re really lucky, to have found the love of our lives so early. Of how we love each other so much,” she reached forward and cupped Jughead’s face lovingly in her hands. He gazed down at her with a look he could only assume looked like pure adoration. “That’s how I know we’ll figure it out,” she said softly before closing the gap between them and planting a kiss on his lips. He wrapped his arms around Betty’s neck, pulling her closer as they made out greedily._

_When Betty pulled back, she had that guiltily giddy look on her face that he could never get enough of. “There’s still time to get out of here,” Jughead said suggestively, openly ogling Betty’s low-cut dress._

_She shook her head, laughing. “Let’s go be with our friends while we’re still all in Riverdale together,” she finally said. “We only have so much time left.”_

_Jughead nodded, reaching for her hand. “Shall we, then?”_

_They finally exited the truck and walked hand-in-hand across the lawn. _

_Inside the party, Jughead stood with one hand in his pocket and the other clutching the one beer he would nurse for the entire night. Betty was only a few feet from him but he kept his eyes on her anyway; force of habit. Bad things seemed to follow them everywhere, and parties were no exception. The thought spurted more anxiety in the pit of his stomach and he quickly took a sip of beer. _Who would watch out for Betty at parties now that they wouldn’t be going to college together?

_He let his gaze fall again on Betty. She had her head thrown back in laughter. Kevin’s arm rested on her shoulder as he showed a picture on his phone, with Cheryl, Veronica, and Archie all crowded around laughing their heads off. _

_Jughead knew that in a minute, one of them would pull him in and he’d be part of it all again. It had been a long time since he’d been an outsider here in Riverdale. That wasn’t what he was afraid of._

_What he _was_ afraid of was that this all had an expiration date. That he was about to lose it all._

* * *

Now, Jughead stands watching the rest of them crowd around Archie and Reggie as they shotgun beers over the sand. Josie and Veronica shriek, Joaquin has his arm slung around Kevin as they both laugh, and Betty squints, shaking her head to communicate disapproval even as she can’t help but crack a smile.

This must be what they do in New York all the time. If nothing else, at least he gets a glimpse of it for this one weekend, right?

Suddenly, Betty looks up to meet Jughead’s eyes. Her smile fades and her expression changes with recognition as she holds his gaze. He finally tears his eyes away to look at Archie wiping beer off his face as Veronica swings her arms around him playfully, at Kevin and Joaquin sipping their beers and joking, and then back at Betty. She nods, as if understanding exactly what he’s thinking. 

Her eyes still trained on him, Betty starts to walk toward him. He gulps and thinks, not for the first time today,_ is this the place?_

But before Betty can reach him, before they can even use words, she’s being pulled away by Veronica handing her a beer and throwing an arm around her shoulder, using that B&V-patented voice that always pulls Betty in. _She never wants to disappoint anyone._

Betty shoots Jughead a desperate shrug of a look as she lets herself get pulled away by her best friend.

_She never disappoints anyone,_ Jughead thinks again, starting to walk toward Archie and Reggie instead. _Except maybe herself. _

* * *

Jughead’s pleasantly surprised that Veronica keeps the group on a strict two-drink limit, negating his earlier fear of having to DD out of necessity. They make sandwiches and eat them on the beach and then smoke another joint, which sobers everyone up even more.

As the 2 PM sun hangs in the sky, Veronica insists that it’s time to get ready for their trip to Ptown, sparking cheering and applause from Kevin. 

“Half hour to shower and get ready good for everyone?” Veronica says as everyone gathers up their towels from the sand.

Reggie groans loudly, but Josie slaps his chest. “Perfect, V,” she says before seemingly reprimanding Reggie as they walk back toward the house.

Jughead wanders around the bottom floor of the beach house for ten minutes and manages to return to the bedroom when Betty’s already dressed and standing combing her hair. She smiles when he enters. “Shower’s all yours,” she says softly, returning her eyes to her reflection in the mirror. He knows this means she doesn’t want to get into it. At least not right now.

“Thanks,” Jughead says, his voice cracked with disuse. He shuffles into the bathroom and is disappointed to find Betty gone when he returns.

Downstairs, Veronica insists on driving all the girls in Archie’s car so they can immediately split off to go shopping. “We _need_ girl time,” she says, throwing her arms around a smiling Josie and Betty. 

Jughead crams into Reggie’s car with all the rest of the guys—though Kevin is careful to note in the car that he and Joaquin will be attending their drag show _solo_—and pulls the window all the way down so he can stare at the scenery with the wind whipping his hair. The only person he’s really in the mood to talk to is Betty. _I _guess _I can settle for Archie,_ he thinks with a sigh as he hears Archie’s familiar, goofy laugh booming from where he’s loudly joking with Reggie in the front seat.

They pay to park in a gravelly parking lot attended by a leathery, middle-aged man in a worn Red Sox cap. Joaquin and Kevin almost immediately peel off, Kevin blowing them kisses as he excitedly shows his boyfriend around for the first time.

Archie leads Jughead and Reggie past pastel-colored houses adorned with rainbow flags and perfectly-manicured gardens, quirky sea-glass sculptures and prim white fences. It somehow feels rigidly New England while simultaneously being loudly queer and Jughead thinks that he’s never been anywhere quite like it.

Archie presents the main drag with a sweep of his hands. “Okay, Veronica,” Jughead jokes, earning a high-five from Reggie.

“You guys wanna just walk the length of this thing first?” Archie asks, scratching his head. “It is pretty cool to take in. And we can go in anywhere that looks cool.”

Jughead and Reggie both nod, and the three of them walk the length of Commercial Street, passing little gift shops and restaurants, drag shows and gay bars, looking into the windows, taking pictures, and teasing Archie about his forthcoming proposal. It isn’t entirely as bad as Jughead thought it would be.

That is, until Archie points out a bar that always makes him think of Reggie. “Let’s go in!” Reggie immediately insists. Archie blanches at Jughead’s immediate grimace.

“Just for one drink,” Archie quickly compromises and Jughead nods begrudgingly as Archie gives him a pleading look.

“Alright,” Jughead agrees, sighing. “One drink.”

One drink quickly turns into three for Reggie and Archie, even as Jughead nurses just a water. He’s never much enjoyed day drinking. He slumps down on the barstool, wondering what Betty and the rest of the women are up to. 

Archie has just finished telling a story from a recent gig in the city when Reggie turns his gaze on Jughead. 

“What?” Jughead says, annoyed.

“So, now that it’s just us guys,” Reggie starts and Jughead bubbles with anxiety. _That can’t be good. _“Tell us what the deal is with you and Betty.”

Jughead shakes his head, his face immediately reddening as Archie shakes his head and nudges Reggie’s arm. “Reg, stop,” Archie says, trying to keep his tone light even as his eyes widen.

“What do you mean?” Jughead spits back. Not his best comeback, but better than nothing.

“I mean...you’re sharing a bed, right? Have you two—” he puts down his drink to simulate a penis going into a vagina with his fingers and Jughead shakes his head, slamming his water glass down.

“Seriously, Reggie?” he yells. “Don’t talk about Betty like that!”

The bartender looks up at them in alarm and Archie says, “Guys, stop. Reggie, stop being intrusive and weird about our friends.”

Reggie shakes his head, taking another sip of his drink. “So sensitive. I don’t see what the big deal is. You two clearly still—”

“Reggie!” Archie snaps. “Stop.” He signals for the bartender, who eagerly hastens toward them.

“We’ll grab the check,” Archie says kindly to the extremely grateful-looking man, who immediately rushes to the register to cash them out.

Archie insists on paying the bill as Reggie chugs the rest of his drink and Jughead awkwardly sips his water, looking down at the wood bar. 

The three of them are quiet for a couple minutes as they walk again down Commercial Street. Thankfully, Reggie spots something in the window of a gift shop that catches his eye for Josie. Jughead’s grateful for the distraction that the inside of one of these little shops will surely bring, but Archie stops them directly in front of the door.

“You go ahead, Reg,” he says as Reggie holds the door open and looks back at them questioningly. An older white couple navigate around Reggie to head into the store. “This place looks tiny and super crowded,” Archie adds. “We’ll wait for you out here, take your time.”

Reggie shrugs and enters the store alone as Archie sighs and walks back onto the sidewalk.

“Real subtle, Arch,” Jughead says, rolling his eyes and following. “What’s up?”

Archie just stands there with his arms crossed, staring at him intently. When Jughead simply stares back and refuses to crack, Archie sighs and finally looks away toward the water. “All these years, why’d you never ask me anything about what Betty was up to?” he finally says, surprising Jughead with his simple wisdom, as Archie is wont to do from time to time.

Jughead shrugs. It takes him a minute to put it into words, but he finally lands on: “I guess I was afraid of what I’d find out.”

Archie turns again to look intensely at Jughead: “And now?”

Jughead shrugs, averting his eyes as he answers honestly, “I’m enjoying getting to learn about what Betty’s like now...straight from her.”

Archie nods, seeming satisfied enough as he rubs sweat off his brow and looks past the shops toward the sea. The two stand waiting for Reggie in companionable silence for awhile. When Archie finally speaks again, it’s to say something that he may not even realize makes Jughead tear up for a moment. 

“All I know is that I love you guys. And you’re the most yourselves when you’re together.” 

And then Reggie’s walking toward them, and it’s over. 

* * *

Jughead’s properly full from their dinner in a crowded, loud restaurant with way too many people in Vineyard Vines apparel for Jughead’s liking. If there’s one thing Jughead knows he can always count on Veronica for, it’s making him suffer a lot for the pay-off of tasting some of the best food he’d ever had. Even so, the dinner hadn’t been entirely ideal, as there hadn’t been room for him to talk to Betty one-on-one. She had, however, been placed across from him, in a perfect location to raise her eyebrows suggestively and shoot him her trademark expressive looks that practically had him spitting out his water at various things that Reggie and Kevin did throughout the dinner. 

He turns away from the bar after conceding to Archie’s demands and ordering his one beer for the night and surveys the area in search of his friends. Veronica and Archie are engaged in what looks like a very contentious game of darts against Josie and Reggie. Jughead laughs when he sees Archie pull Veronica into a huddle with a serious look on his face.

He scans the bar again and finds Joaquin and Kevin dancing very closely on the dance floor. He blushes and looks away. _Good for them._ That leaves Betty, sitting at the table they’d snagged when they first entered the bar, nursing a margarita as she watches over everyone’s bags and smirks at her friends playing darts in the distance.

Jughead smiles and walks toward her. “They’re too competitive for their own good,” he says before placing his drink down and taking the seat beside her.

“Them?” Betty shrugs, swirling her drink, but then adds in a softer, joking tone: “Always have been.”

“Archie has gotten so much more mature, though,” Jughead says. 

“I know!” Betty says enthusiastically, smiling. “Being by himself up in Boston did him some good, I think. I mean, he visited us like, once a month and Veronica went up there a couple times a semester, but still. He broke into the scene there and made musician friends...and grew up a bit.”

Jughead nods. “Each time he came to stay in Riverdale he seemed a little more mature,” he says. “After Fred…” Betty nods. They both had agreed on numerous occasions that Fred’s death had been the single worst thing about their senior year of high school, by far. “...I was afraid he would never be the same again.”

“Fred Andrews made sure that wouldn’t happen, though,” Betty reminds him. “By raising Archie the way he did.”

Jughead nods, wiping a single tear from his eye. “You’re right.”

Betty smiles, looking across the bar to give Jughead a moment to collect himself. “Everyone’s more mature now. Kevin and Joaquin, Josie, Veronica...even Reggie.” Jughead snorts at that and Betty laughs before continuing firmly, “Even if they still have their shit. I mean, I know I still have my shit.”

Jughead laughs. “True.” He surveys their friends again, noting that Josie is doing a victory dance while Veronica crosses her arms and scowls. “Everyone seems pretty happy, though.”

Betty nods. “Yeah, I think they are.” The words fall hollow in the air, though, and Jughead gets the feeling Betty is tired of saying them. 

Jughead takes a swig of his beer, tapping his hands on the table. It feels like they’re skirting just so slightly around what needs to be said. 

“Let’s play skeeball,” Betty suddenly blurts out. It hadn’t escaped Jughead’s notice that her eyes had darted toward the two skeeball lanes in the corner from time to time while they’d been talking. He looks over now; a couple is just walking away, leaving one of the lanes open.

Jughead cocks his head to the side and shoots Betty one of his admittedly flirtatious looks that are reserved only for her. “After all that talk, are you gonna get competitive on me now, Betts?”

Betty blushes and shakes her head as she stands up with her margarita in hand. “Skeeball is a _chill_ game,” she insists. 

Jughead laughs. “Oh, yes, and you would know. Because Betty Cooper is a _chill _person, right?”

Betty shrugs. “You haven’t seen me in seven years. I could have become chill in that time.”

Jughead gives her a look of disbelief and she laughs. “Juggie,” she whines and the sound sends a chill down his spine. “It’ll be fun.”

“Okay, okay,” Jughead says, standing up with his beer in hand as Betty claps her hands together and pulls her bag on her shoulder. “Let them watch their own bags for once,” she says sassily before leading the way toward the skeeball lane. 

Jughead laughs and pulls his wallet out. “How much is this?”

“$1,” Betty says, smiling appreciatively as Jughead pushes a dollar bill into the machine. 

“You first,” Jughead insists, smiling at the joyful look that covers her face.

“I’ll get the next one,” she says as she waits for the machine to start up.

As Jughead laughs heartily at Betty’s “skeeball stance” she then models for him, he decides that maybe it’s okay they aren’t talking about big, emotional stuff right now. Maybe they’re right where they need to be, enjoying the simple pleasure of finally being together again. 

Jughead looks back at his friends. Archie and Reggie are arguing at the same time that Veronica and Josie are waving their arms around at each other, seemingly debating the fairness of their most recent round of darts. Kevin and Joaquin are full on making out on the dance floor as a slow jam plays. 

_After all_, he thinks before turning back to Betty, _this isn’t the time or the place for the conversation we need to have._

* * *

This time, Veronica thankfully suggests bringing the party back to the beach house before everyone gets too wasted. 

Back on the patio, everyone’s changed into their bathing suits again as Veronica and Josie uncover the hot tub. Jughead slides open the door and balances the water pitcher and glasses he’d grabbed as the rest of the guys prepared alcohol and snacks in the kitchen. Betty sits at the table rolling joints. Jughead smiles and tries to place the pitcher onto the table as lightly as possible so as not to disturb her process. He still earns a glare from Betty though, who covers her half-rolled joint with her hand as the pitcher half-shakily lands on the tabletop.

Jughead laughs as he sits down beside her. “What’s that look?”

“Respect the sanctity of the roll,” Betty says seriously before breaking character and bursting into laughter.

Jughead shakes his head, laughing with her. “So, you kept smoking straight through college?” he asks as she returns to rolling, hoping it’s not a weird thing to ask.

She looks a little surprised but pleased at the question. “Yeah,” she says. “I actually kind of became known for my skills by the end of freshman year,” she pauses her rolling to gesture down toward the joint before continuing her motions. Her voice gets a little more solemn as she adds, “Second semester, my dorm-neighbor found out her dad had a pregnant mistress,” she explains. 

Jughead’s eyes widen. “Woof.”

“Yeah. So I rolled the fattest joint I possibly could for the three of us that night and...well, it became legendary.”

Jughead’s mouth drops open. “Like I always said: Nancy Drew crossed with the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”

Betty blushes as she licks up the side of the joint to seal it. “So, how about you?” she says, putting the finalized joint down and grinding up more weed. “Did that weed connect we finally found when I visited come through?”

The words punch him in the gut a bit with their honesty. He almost forgot they’d intensely searched for a dealer in Evanston that last weekend. “Yeah,” Jughead says, clearing his throat. “I...texted him the day you left.”

There’s a sadness in her eyes but Betty smiles faintly. “I would’ve done the same thing,” she says. “I mean, I did do the same thing...when I got back to New York.”

He nods, allowing himself to crack a smile too. It feels good to just talk like this, like it’s all normal. What else can they do? “Of course you did,” he says jokingly. 

Betty starts on a second joint. “I told Kev I’d roll at least three for the hot tub,” she says in explanation, tipping her head toward the now-steaming hot tub that Kevin and Joaquin are gingerly stepping into.

The door slides open again and Reggie finally comes out onto the patio with another six-pack of beer in his arms. He stops at the table to place them down and observes Betty rolling. 

Reggie taps Jughead on the shoulder to Jughead’s annoyance. “Isn’t Betty’s superior joint-rolling the best thing about post-high school Betty?” 

Betty shakes her head, continuing to roll the joint even as he can tell she’s a little miffed by the comment. “You know she did that for the first time with me, right?” Jughead says, surprising even himself with the defensiveness in his voice.

Reggie’s confusion is evident on his face. “Really? Guess I didn’t get the invite, huh?”

“We spent a lot of time alone together that summer,” Betty says, pausing to shoot Reggie a harsh look. Jughead knows that look well. It means: _shut the fuck up._

Reggie nods, quickly backing down. “See y’all in there,” he says, pointing toward the hot tub and approaching Josie, who’s waiting for him on the edge of the tub.

Veronica emerges from the house in a dramatic black robe over her bikini, Archie following behind her with a final six-pack of beer. “The hot tub is seriously amazing, Jughead,” Archie says, dropping the cans on the table and earning a glare from Betty.

Jughead laughs. “So I heard last night from you two.”

“Can you really blame drunk us?” Veronica gushes, gesturing toward the hot tub the other two couples are now happily settled in.

Betty starts on a third joint and nudges her head in the direction of the two finished ones. “You guys take these into the tub, I’ll join you when I’m finished.”

Veronica and Archie eagerly grab the joints and a few beers before heading in the direction of the hot tub. Betty continues methodically rolling and Jughead snorts as he watches Veronica dramatically remove her flimsy robe and reach her hand out to Archie to help her into the tub.

“Be nice,” Betty says without taking her eyes off the joint.

“Are you a witch?” Jughead says in disbelief.

Betty laughs, finally looking up at him as she licks the third joint closed. “Maybe,” she says before laughing too.

She ties up the joint and presents it to Jughead in the palm of his hand. “Ta-da!”

Jughead takes it from her, inspecting closely to find it nothing short of flawless, as expected. “Bravo,” he says as Betty scrapes her chair back and stands up.

“Shall we join them?”

Jughead nods. “Go ahead.”

Betty stops for a second. “You_ are_ gonna come in though, right?”

“I’m right behind you,” he promises, standing up to follow.

Jughead sees that Kevin, Veronica, and Betty must have an established system for joint-smoking in this hot tub; a couple souvenier ashtrays rest on tall barstools Kevin and Joaquin had placed along the border of the tub. Joaquin taps ash off the end of the joint and presents it to Betty as she finally settles into the hot tub. Jughead is the last to wade in, awkwardly fitting himself in the only space left between Betty and Josie. 

Veronica launches into a story from their college escapades at Lodge Lodge and Jughead tries to concentrate, but the truth is that he can’t handle how close Betty’s wet, half-naked body is to him. She turns to lock eyes with him at one point and his mouth goes dry at the look in her eyes when she scans his bare chest. She bites her lip and then quickly, as if catching herself, turns away to return her attention to the conversation. Jughead swallows. Beads of water are glistening on her perfect chest as she nods along with the story, making her breasts jiggle, and he longs to untie her bikini. He longs to be alone with her. 

Instead, he adjusts his shorts and stretches his arms back along the tub, trying desperately to return his focus to the conversation instead of every single dirty thing he wants to do to Betty. _We really need to have a damn talk._

* * *

By the time they finally get to bed, the effects of the one beer and the joints are fading fast for Jughead. Despite his best efforts to fall asleep, he lays in bed on his back, still completely and utterly awake.

Betty seemed tired when they’d finally entered the room earlier, so he hadn’t pushed any sort of conversation. All day neither of them had had the courage to bring up what really needed to be said, so Jughead figured late at night definitely wasn’t the best time. Jughead can at least admit that he is too mentally exhausted to overcome his terror of rejection by the only girl he’s ever loved—at least until after he’s had a decent night’s sleep.

He wonders if Betty had managed to drift off. It’s been at least thirty minutes since they’d said soft “good nights” to each other and then settled onto their opposite corners of the bed. He turns quietly on his side to sneak a glance at her. He laughs when her green eyes blink back at him. She laughs too and Jughead sits up, flicking on his light.

“I can’t sleep.”

“Me either,” Betty says, giggling. She pushes herself up on her elbow and grins at Jughead in the lamplight. “Remember what we always used to do in Riverdale when we couldn’t sleep?” she whispers.

* * *

_It was the sixth night in a row Betty hadn’t been able to get to sleep. She bolted up in bed, frustrated. _

_Jughead sighed as he sat up beside her and covered Betty’s hand gently with his own. “You too?”_

_“What’s wrong with us?” Betty practically whimpered, leaning her head on Jughead’s shoulder._

_“Probably the multiple life-threatening situations we’ve endured in the past month,” he said cheekily._

_Betty laughed morbidly. “Ugh, I know. But I’m so tired! I just want to sleep,” she whined._

_“Me too, Betts,” Jughead said, placing a kiss on the top of her head. “Hey,” he said, looking down at her excitedly. “Let’s watch a movie.”_

_Betty smiled. “Is this all an elaborate ploy to get me to watch a Tarantino film? Because you know we disagree on that particular director.”_

_Jughead shook his head. “No, no. Your choice. What movie would be most comforting?”_

_“Ooh,” Betty said, stroking Jughead’s hand as she thought. “What power.”_

_“With great power comes great responsibility,” Jughead warned and she giggled. “Oh, I know!” She paused before saying, “_Donnie Darko_.”_

_Jughead immediately smiled. He’d shown Betty that movie the first year they’d been dating when she admitted she’d never seen it. It fit their sophomore-year-level penchant for darkness, had a killer soundtrack and sarcastic humor, and even had some romance to it. _

_“Perfect,” he said. Jughead let Betty settle herself on his chest after putting his laptop in her direct line of vision._

_“But you won’t be able to see as well!” she insisted._

_He shook his head. “I’ve got a good enough view.”_

_“Jug!” Betty scooted up to kiss him. “You’re so corny.”_

_Jughead shrugged. “Whatever it takes to get us to sleep.” He pressed “play” and said, “Now let’s sit back and let the Gyllenhaals do their worst.”_

_Neither of them remembered falling asleep, but they woke up the next morning with Tears For Fears stuck in their head._

* * *

_Almost a year later to the day, Jughead rolled over to find Betty wide awake beside him, fidgeting with her hands. He grabbed her fingers and pushed them away from her palms as she looked up at him appreciatively. _

_“This summer hasn’t been the best for your sleep, huh?” Jughead said gently._

_She shook her head. “How about you?”_

_“Absolutely trash,” he agreed, leaning down to kiss her cheek and she laughed._

_“Joint?” she said, her eyes perking up. _

_“Only if you promise we’ll do our age-old trick afterwards.”_

_Betty groaned. “Ugh, I’m so sick of the beginning of that movie after this year.” She was already grabbing their papers and weed from her nightstand though, so Jughead knew he’d won as he reached for his laptop._

_“Ah, Betty,” he said as he typed in his password. “But the key word there is ‘beginning.’ You haven’t seen the ending in ages. It works every time.”_

_Betty kissed him as she handed off her finished joint. “_Donnie Darko _it is,” she agreed. “But only if we smoke this joint first _and _I can sleep on you.”_

_“Deal,” Jughead said, reaching forward to capture her lips again, this time for longer. _

* * *

In the dark of the Teal Room, Jughead wordlessly opens his laptop and queues up _Donnie Darko_. 

Betty holds his gaze as she watches him. “You remembered?”

“I remember _everything_, Betty.”

Betty blushes and averts her eyes as she stoops down to grab her purse. She scoops a vape pen out and explains sheepishly, “I packed it in case I couldn’t sleep so I could hit something in the room. Veronica has a very strict ‘no smoking inside’ rule here.”

“Ah,” Jughead says, watching her take a deep puff and cough a little. She offers it to him and he takes a couple puffs too before handing it back to Betty. She takes two more hits before placing it on her nightstand and settling back into the pillows.

“Ready?” Jughead checks, hovering his cursor over the “play” button.

“Ready,” Betty assures him. Jughead notices she’s scooted herself closer to him than she’d been when they were trying to sleep. His heart pounds as he starts the movie and settles himself on the pillows, letting himself inch a little closer to Betty too. She glances up at him, sharing a grin at the familiar notes of the opening song, before turning her attention to the movie.

Jughead isn’t quite sure how it happens. Whether he subconsciously moves closer to her or if she crosses to his side first. Or if it was all just some sort of mutual instinct leftover from when they were together. But when Betty does fall asleep one hour later, it’s with her head across Jughead’s chest and _Donnie Darko _still playing faintly in the background. It feels so much like the old days if Jughead just closes his eyes and pretends.

  


  


  


  


_to be continued..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can y’all tell the author is having an Emotional Girl Summer?! 
> 
> Let me know what you thought! I hope to post the third and final chapter sometime in the next couple weeks :) Thanks for reading!
> 
> And thanks to these lovely souls for sprinting to the end of ch 2 with me today: @tory-b @elizabethbettscooper @lanadeljones @strangenightsofdaydreams @endlesswriter03 !!!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> other suggested listening (besides the obvious “power on” by james blake)
> 
> still run (feat. starchild & the new romantic) - wet  
jelmore - bon iver  
fire - SiR

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI, this final chapter ended up being kind of a free-for-all dual POV (which is more of my usual Bughead style for better or for worse) but I’m really glad the Ch 1 Betty POV/Ch 2 Jughead POV worked as well for the first two chapters as I’d hoped! I hope you enjoy the final chapter! 
> 
> Thanks to @catthecoder @endlesswriter03 & @orangenfrottee for sprinting with me to the end of this chapter this afternoon!

_Have you ever coexisted so easily?_

_Let's go home and talk shit about everyone_

_Let's go home, finally_

~james blake

* * *

Betty wakes with her hair sprawled across Jughead’s chest. _Am I dreaming?_ She half-opens her eyes and registers that Jughead’s laptop is sitting dead across the bed. 

She’s impressed by her own self-control that she doesn’t flat-out scream when she opens her eyes again to find that this is _not_ a dream and Jughead’s (_far-more-toned-than-I-remember_) chest is actually right beneath her. Not to mention that he’s looking positively sexy in the white tank he’d worn to bed. Betty closes her eyes, fighting with another, more unsure version of herself that’s telling her to move. She wants to swim in this warmth, in the feeling of being close to Jughead again, but she’s also afraid of what will happen when he wakes up. Does she want them to wake up like this? Would it force them to talk about whatever’s happening between them?

Betty thinks back to Veronica’s self-proclaimed “girl time” the day before, which had felt at times to Betty more like an interrogation. She knows her friends are well-intentioned, but their heavy-handed comments had started to wear on her—about how Betty and Jughead seemed to get along just as well as they always had, how they still looked so cute together, had they thought about giving it another go? Betty had bitten her tongue, swallowing a comment that bubbled to the surface: that this trip would clearly be a lot more comfortable for Josie and Veronica if the last two single people went ahead and paired up. Loose ends, right?

Betty can picture herself spitting the words back at an immediately-apologetic Josie and Veronica. She would’ve said it, too...if she’d disagreed with them. But everything they were saying was, admittedly, true. She wanted Jughead just as much as she always had, and she had a gut feeling that he wanted her too. They’d both caught the other staring too many times to count this weekend, but something seemed to be holding Jughead back from making a move.

She understands. It’s the same thing that’s been holding her back too. _Fear_. 

In bed now, Betty nuzzles in closer to Jughead despite her anxiety and wonders if she should do the painstaking thing of separating herself from the person she wants to be close to most in the world. They’ve been skirting around everything all weekend so far. Should she move before he sees them in this compromising position? 

She doesn’t get a chance to find out. Because then Jughead stirs, Betty’s heart stopping in her throat at the sleepy smile on his face. (It reminds her of too much, but most vividly she remembers the first time they ever fell asleep together accidentally in his trailer sophomore year. She shudders: _while investigating the Black Hood._)

“We slept,” Jughead says softly. And then, “it never fails, huh?” He doesn’t say anything about the fact that Betty is nestled in his arms, just plays with the hair at the nape of her neck like he used to do. As if this is still natural. _Maybe it still is._

“After all these years,” Betty says, greedily taking him in. He looks especially vulnerable bathed in the morning light coming in through the windows. They’d forgotten to draw the curtains the night before. 

“I gotta say, that movie felt a _lot _deeper when we were teenagers,” Jughead says and she feels his laughter vibrating, they’re so close.

Betty bursts out laughing too, burying her head into his chest again, hiding. It’s all too much and not enough at once. She wants to tell him everything.

“Betty,” Jughead says lowly, and Betty immediately recognizes his bedroom voice. It stirs something in the pit of her stomach she’d almost forgotten was there.

She lifts her face from his chest and almost forgets to breathe at the intensity in those blue eyes she’d memorized for her dreams. “Yeah, Jug?”

“Last night was...really fun.”

Betty nods, thinking back to playing skeeball and joking around while she rolled joints. “It really was,” she says. “I always have fun with you. I mean, I always have.”

Jughead shoots her one of those signature goofy grins. She forgets how much he always used to bask in her praise, too.

Jughead runs his hands up Betty’s back as if about to pull away from her and Betty feels sad at the thought. Is this all temporary? But then he says, “I thought maybe...we could wake and bake together.”

Betty smiles, her worst fears unfounded. Jughead had always been the one who could best soothe her tendency to overthink. 

Jughead’s watching her when he softly adds, “if you still like to do that.”

* * *

_FP had been very lenient with Jughead that summer about taking the truck, knowing that Jug and Betty wanted to cherish these last months together before college. Before everything changed. (For better or for worse remained to be seen.)_

_Besides, FP figured they could use some adventure together beyond the city limits of Riverdale. Or at least that was what he told Jughead under the single light on their front porch one evening before handing off the car keys. _

_Last night was one such night. Betty and Jughead both had a completely free weekend, so they jumped in the truck with overnight bags and no real plan. Jughead adjusted the mirrors and then placed his finger under Betty’s chin. “Where do you want to go, Betts?”_

_Betty giggled, leaning forward and planting a sloppy kiss on his lips before buckling her seatbelt. “Honestly,” she said with a sigh. “I don’t care as long as there’s a beach.” _

_Jughead rolled the windows down. “The beach it is.” It was set to be a scorcher of a weekend, and Jughead wouldn’t mind spending quality time alone with Betty scantily clad in a bikini._

_It was half past midnight when they rolled into a motel parking lot in Seaside. They hotboxed the truck before fucking on the motel bed and passing out sweaty in each other’s arms. Adventures like these always turned Betty on._

_But despite that, Jughead’s favorite part was a newer ritual for them. In the mornings, they now liked to “wake and bake”_—_Sweet Pea had taught them the term_—_rolling up a joint almost immediately after waking and heading outside to smoke while the morning was still quiet and cool. So far, they’d smoked on a cliff overlooking a beautiful forest; at sunrise while camping out by Sweetwater River; and sitting with their legs dangling over an overpass, watching the big trucks pass by and making up stories about where each one could be going. Jughead had immediately agreed to the beach because he assumed Betty had this part of the trip in mind. Another breathtaking view to add to their list. _

_Indeed, Betty woke him up early, insisting they wake and bake while the sun was still rising on the beach._

_“It’ll be so beautiful, Jughead,” she insisted, peppering kisses all over his face and of course it fucking worked._

_On the beach, Betty spread out a blanket leftover from the Cooper days, one that she’d told Jughead it felt exhilarating to get dirty after years and years of being scolded to keep everything so perfectly clean. She brought it on all their adventures, dirtying it up with their experiences a little more each time. _

_Jughead wrapped his arm around Betty as she leaned her head on his shoulder and sparked up the joint. She puffed and watched the white smoke exit her mouth before turning to Jughead to pass off the joint. “I hope we can get away like this one day,” she said. _

_“One day?” Jughead said, coughing as he blew out his hit. “We’re doing it right now.”_

_ Betty sighed. “Of course we are. But this all has an end-date, and I just mean...I hope one day we can do this all the time, without an end.”_

_Jughead leaned down to kiss Betty’s cheek as he passed the joint back. “And why is that, Betts?”_

_“Because...being somewhere so beautiful with you, just smoking and watching the sun rise...it makes everything feel less significant,” Betty said, golden streaks of sunshine lighting up her hair. “And everything in high school was too significant. We didn’t get to have moments of complete freedom like this. That’s all I want with you in our future.”_

_Jughead smiled, warmed by the words. _Our future. _That summer it had become more and more important to remind each other that their future was something they were still committed to. “I promise we’ll be here again one day,” Jughead said. “Our future will have mornings on the beach just like this.”_

_Instead of responding, Betty leaned up to capture Jughead’s lips in a tender kiss. Jughead was careful to put out the joint before letting his hands tangle in her hair and the kiss quickly became frantic, passionate, horizontal on the blanket. For now, at least, they had all the time in the world._

* * *

Still settled in the softness of the Lodge’s blankets, Betty blushes under Jughead’s gaze. “Yeah,” she says. “In fact, waking and baking is still one of my favorite things to do.”

“Then it’s settled,” Jughead says softly. It seems neither of them wants to be the one to disturb their current position, so Betty finally takes the leap.

“Should I roll or will you?” she asks, moving her body off Jughead’s to pull weed out of her purse. 

Jughead makes a face as he peels back the blanket and climbs out of bed. “Are you kidding me, Betts? You roll, I’ll make the coffee.” 

Betty shoots him an incredulous look, running a brush through her hair and looking like she’s about to protest, but he says, “I promise my coffee has gotten better since we lived together.”

“I’ll have to taste it to believe it,” Betty agrees, slipping into her flip-flops.

Jughead rummages through his own backpack and pulls a crinkled Ziploc bag out. “I brought some bud too,” he admits, passing it off to Betty, who carefully inspects the nugs through the plastic. “Figured I could contribute if there was any smoking going down this weekend.”

“Now you tell me,” Betty jokes as she waits for Jug to finish fixing his hair. “It looks like good stuff.”

“And the coffee will be just as good,” Jughead says cheekily, passing Betty to lead the way down to the kitchen.

* * *

“Wow, this is definitely the fanciest coffee machine I’ve ever used,” Jughead muses as he measures out coffee grinds. His words break the comfortable silence that punctuates the bottom floor of Lodge Lodge. Just like the day before, they’re the only ones awake at this early hour, even if they hadn’t quite woken up in time for the sunrise. 

Betty smirks from where she’s rolling a joint at the counter. “You need help?” she teases, but Jughead tsks.

“Don’t try to get out of tasting my coffee, Betty Cooper,” he says, shooting her a lazy grin that Betty feels all the way down to her toes. 

“So, it’s the big day,” Betty says, needing to fill the silence with something other than her rapidly-beating heart. “Everyone just has to keep the secret from Veronica for like, twelve more hours.”

As the coffee starts to drip into the pot, Jughead turns around with his hands resting on the counter. “I think the team can manage it, right?” he says, laughing. 

“Hey, we’ve come this far,” Betty says. “I am _genuinely _surprised that it hasn’t been spoiled yet.”

Jughead’s expression softens as he looks past Betty out onto the beach. “He picked a really beautiful place to propose,” he says.

Betty nods enthusiastically. “This is one of Veronica’s favorite places in the world,” she says. “V’s gonna love it. And Archie set up the perfect plan for tonight. All we have to do is follow it.”

Jughead smiles. “I’m kind of glad Archie double-assigned getting the ring over to the proposal later.”

Betty shakes her head. “Oh, really? Why, because it takes you off the hook?”

Jughead shrugs. “Maybe,” he says, grinning slightly. “But it’s also just kind of nice he wanted to involve me when he obviously could’ve just asked you for help.”

Betty nods, letting the words sink in. She doesn’t have a chance to say anything before Jughead thoughtfully speaks again. “Did Archie used to come on these Cape Cod excursions in college, too?”

Betty can picture her college self draped on one end of the sitting room couch with her nose buried in a book, looking up, amused, to find Archie and Veronica making some insane cocktail in the blender. Kevin out on the patio doing yoga and swiping through Grindr in search of a weekend hook-up, Betty pretending not to hear the suggestive comments Archie and Veronica tipsily “whisper” in each other’s ears mere feet from where she’s perched.

“Oh yeah,” Betty finally says to answer Jughead’s question. “Whenever he wasn’t busy in Boston, he’d come with us. Me, Archie, Veronica, Kevin. We had some fun times up here back then.”

Jughead nods, sadness coming over his face like a shadow. “That was before Joaquin was back in the picture?”

“Yes,” Betty says. “But that didn’t stop me from being a perpetual fifth-wheel to Archie and Veronica and Kevin and his Ptown-hook-up-of-the-week.”

Jughead watches Betty and she almost shivers under his gaze. She’s finished rolling the joint now and he’s reading her like a book. Like he can see into the past, at the sheer loneliness Betty has felt in this house over the years, something that she’d never even bothered to mention to her other friends. 

Betty coughs, pointing at the full pot behind Jughead. “Coffee’s ready.”

Outside on the beach, Betty lays out another of the ugly reject towels—this time, a respectable Tweety Bird that makes Jughead laugh heartily as he balances their mugs of coffee in his hands. 

“I am _so _committed to the Alt Lodge persona that these towels make me want to write about,” Jughead says as he settles onto the towel beside Betty. It doesn’t give them much room for personal space, but neither of them are complaining. 

“Oh yeah?” Betty says, taking the coffee mug that Jughead hands her. “Short story inspiration?”

Jughead shoots her a challenging grin. “I’ve had about a million ideas since we got here, Betty, and I know you have too,” he watches Betty blush under his gaze. “I saw you writing out here yesterday morning.”

Betty smiles. “You caught me.” She quickly redirects: “But an Alt Lodge persona sounds intriguing. Like, a secret second Lodge sibling who renounces all wealth and luxury.”

Jughead rubs his hands together excitedly. “_Yes._ That’s what I’m talkin’ about, Cooper.”

Betty giggles, reaching for the joint laying at her feet. “Without further ado,” she says as she flicks her lighter and brings it to the tip. 

Jughead lets his hit out and watches the trail of smoke float across the quiet beach. The early morning light beating down on his face makes him feel purified and lazy, the thought that everyone else is likely still nestled in bed comforting him. The whole scene is entirely peaceful in a postcard-perfect way that Jughead isn’t used to having access to.

“So,” Betty says. “The new job is good?”

“New job is good,” Jughead agrees, turning his attention back to Betty. “Decent pay, benefits, and more responsibility. What more can I ask for?”

“You have time to write outside work?” Betty asks. “I hear you publishing folks have to take a lot of reading home.”

Jughead shrugs. “I find the time though,” he says. “You know I always have.”

Betty smiles, remembering a teenage Jughead propped up at Pop’s with his laptop and a cup of coffee at any time of day or night. “You really have,” she says. “Do you have any favorite writing spots in our neighborhood?”

Jughead names a couple coffee shops Betty likes too; they bond over a friendly barista named Angel and a mutual favorite cold brew. Sand between their toes and a light breeze rustling Betty’s hair, they talk easily about their commutes to work, the best place to get dry cleaning done in the neighborhood when Jughead asks for advice. It all comes so easily because talking around what needs to be said has apparently become their thing this weekend.

Neither of them notice the house waking up behind them. They just keep talking, their coffee soon gone and the mugs forgotten as they alternately let the joint go out and then relight it when they realize what’s happened. It’s a careful rhythm neither is willing to break, even if both of them cherish each time their bodies accidentally brush as they sit beside each other on the towel. 

It’s when conversation has finally circled back around to their shared neighborhood—after Jughead divulges the NYC spots he wants to see that he hasn’t had a chance to visit yet—that Betty finally snaps.

“One thing that has definitely not been overhyped about New York is the bagels,” Jughead says, his voice tinged with that unmistakable edge of being stoned. “They’re seriously amazing.”

Betty smiles, clapping her hands together. “Spoken like a true New Yorker,” she says. “Now I can never live anywhere with bad bagels again. Do you have a favorite yet?” She secretly wonders if she and Kevin’s usual morning-after spot ten minutes from their apartment has become his go-to as well.

“Yeah, that place over on the corner of DeKalb,” Jughead says, scratching his head. “I discovered it last week and have been back like, four times since.”

Betty pictures the unassuming bagel shop, can see her legs swinging on the barstool in the window as she laughs and eats with Kevin, as they did just last Saturday. Jughead could’ve been one of the people passing by. Except that he couldn’t have. Betty would have surely seen him. Maybe she’d have frozen in place. Or maybe she’d have run out the door, chased him down the street, demanded he see her. Suddenly, the knowledge that he’s been just _existing_ so close to her for two whole months doesn’t comfort her. Instead, it infuriates her.

Jughead is waxing poetic about flavored cream cheese but Betty can’t even hear him, interrupting to finally blurt it out. “Why didn’t you call me?”

Jughead stops mid-sentence, startled, as he’s unsure what she’s even referring to. After all, he can’t even count the amount of times he’d wanted to call her in the seven years they spent apart.

“When you moved to New York, why didn’t you call me?” Betty repeats, her nostrils flaring and her hands curled into fists as she turns on the towel to face him head-on.

He doesn’t say anything for a minute, breathing hard and watching her. He has a million answers to that question but nothing sounds right.

“And…I have another question,” Betty says before he can even think of something to say. It’s all coming out now, questions that she’d kept close to her chest because he was the only soul on the planet who could answer them. And he’d once seemed permanently out of her reach. She’s sick of wasting time, now that he’s finally sitting right in front of her.

There’s fear in his eyes. “What?” he croaks out.

“Why didn’t you come to the reunion the summer we graduated from college? Were you avoiding me? Is it because you didn’t want to get back together with me and you didn’t want me to get the wrong idea?”

“Oh my God,” Jughead says, his eyes widening in horror. _How could she ever think that’s it? Is that what she’s thought for three years? “_Betty, I swear, that’s not why. Let me explain—” 

“Betty! Jughead!”

He’s trying to figure out where to begin, but again, Veronica and Josie are—somehow, impossibly—there, calling innocently to Betty and Jughead, asking if they want to head to a “too-quaint-for-words” diner for breakfast. Jughead feels like his head is going to explode. Again, just when they’re getting to the heart of things, their friends are there to get in their way. He knows this weekend is about Veronica and Archie (even if Veronica doesn’t quite know that yet), but doesn’t Betty deserve a shot at happiness too?

“Wait!” Jughead calls out as Betty moves to get up, always the loyal friend even when he registers pure disappointment in her eyes. “We need to finish this conversation,” he says firmly, looking at no one but Betty. 

Betty whips her head back around, inexplicably drawn to him, and suddenly she recognizes a familiar look—the very one she’d seen burning in his eyes the night he dropped her off at college.

* * *

_It had been the worst drive of Betty’s life. They tried to laugh and joke and make light conversation like they usually did on road trips, but neither could shake the reality that every mile they traveled meant they were one mile closer to saying goodbye._

_As Betty stood outside her new building, having unloaded every one of her possessions from the back of FP’s truck and into her dorm room, she was reminded of the bitter fact that there was simply nothing left for Betty and Jughead to do. No more pesky tasks to cross off a to-do list as distraction from this, the thing they’ve been dreading all summer—all year, really. Betty felt selfish for even feeling this way when she knew her twin XL bed was just inside, waiting for her to curl up into a ball and cry. Jughead would have only miles and miles of empty road to keep him company as he drove himself to Northwestern. He’d refused FP’s offer to meet him halfway, insisting he had to do the drive alone. _

_“This is it,” Jughead said as he finished double-checking they’d unpacked all of Betty’s things and shut the passenger-side door. He came around the truck and grabbed Betty’s hands._

_She forced herself to look up at him, tears already welling in her eyes. “Are you sure you’ll be okay doing this drive alone?”_

_Jughead nodded. “I have so many albums and podcasts queued up,” he promised, squeezing her hand. “And you’ll give me a call from time to time, right? Your voice can keep me company.”_

_“Of course,” Betty said, smiling up at him. She already knew that their long-distance phone calls wouldn’t be enough, though. She already dreaded going to bed—for the first time in a year, it would be without his body beside her own. _

_“I’m gonna miss you so much, Betty,” Jughead said, emotion finally betraying the measured calm he’d been keeping up for her since they’d arrived at Columbia a couple hours earlier._

_Betty’s voice shook as she brought her hands up to frame Jughead’s face. “I already miss you.”_

_His arms came around her waist easily and they looked at each other, greedily taking each other in. “I’ll be here for Columbus—Indigenous Peoples’ Day, I mean—Weekend,” he promised and she nodded, reaching up to kiss him soundly._

_“I love you,” she whispered when he pulled back. _

_“Betty,” he said, looking down at her insistently, his eyes burning passionately in a way that practically made her heart stutter in her throat. “I’ll love you forever. No amount of time or distance can ever get in the way of that.”_

_Those words, that look in his eyes_—_they were a promise that lulled her to sleep that night, more comforting than the image of FP’s truck finally pulling away as Betty waved and waved, tears streaming down her face._

* * *

“Text me the address, V,” Betty says without tearing her eyes from Jughead. “We’ll come meet you.”

Veronica’s eyes widen, inspecting the pair closely. “Sure thing, B,” she says, ushering Josie quickly back toward the beach house.

They sit in relative silence while they watch their friends pile into cars and head for the diner. It’s almost spooky that none of them make suggestive jokes. Betty vaguely wonders what threats Veronica had made when she’d returned to the beach house without Betty and Jughead.

_Why is this so hard?_ Maybe because they’ve both been keeping this secret from everyone, but now they’re with the only person they’re incapable of keeping secrets from, and they hadn’t even lasted a full weekend.

For something to do more than anything else, Betty relights what little’s left of the joint and passes it to Jughead in silence. As their fingers brush, Jughead clears his throat. 

“I wanted to talk to you—_really _talk to you—the second I saw you again,” Jughead admits. “It’s just...every time I tried, it always seemed like someone was there.”

Betty nods, a ghost of a smile crossing her face. _Can’t argue with that, _she thinks, a montage of her friend’s Greatest Hits of Interruption playing in her mind.

“I should’ve called you when I moved to New York, I should have,” Jughead says, and Betty’s heart is beating fast. “Then we wouldn’t have to blow off breakfast to get alone time at this crazy beach mansion.”

Betty laughs, feeling relieved almost to be having such a bold and honest conversation. After two days of sexual tension and nervousness around Jughead, this feels freeing. “I wanted to ask Archie more about you,” Betty says, spurred on by Jughead’s own admission. “But I was afraid of what I’d find out.”

Jughead’s eyes widen as he takes her in, processing what Betty’s just said. And then, he does something that surprises them both. He lets out a deep, guttural laugh. 

“Betty, I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you why I didn’t come to the reunion sooner,” he says when he finally catches his breath and speaks again. “Another time I wanted to call you but was too chickenshit to do it.”

Betty watches him, entranced, pinned in place by a tentative hope. 

“I lied,” he says, wringing his hands out. The movement softens Betty’s expression. “I didn’t have to stay behind for an interview that weekend because I’d already had the interview and gotten the job,” Jughead says next.

“You already had the Chicago job?” Betty’s brow furrows in confusion as she repeats the information, trying to piece it together. 

“Yes,” Jughead says, gazing into her eyes. “I _needed_ the job and Betty, I knew I couldn’t see you. I knew that if I saw you, talked to you the way I wanted to...I wouldn’t be able to get on the plane back to Chicago. I wouldn’t be able to leave you again.” 

Betty’s eyes fill with tears, her stomach pinching with emotion. What to even say next? “And since you’ve been in New York?” she finally asks. She has so many other questions, but this is the one that really matters. 

“Well,” Jughead says, laughing shakily as he rubs the back of his neck. “Fear plus distance times seven years is a pretty powerful equation, Betts. I was scared.”

Betty nods, smiling through her tears. “I was scared too.”

Jughead nods, seeming to read Betty’s mind as he continues. “...that you’d found someone else. That you’re too good for me. That...you could never feel that way about me again.”

Betty shakes her head and laughs through her tears—suddenly understanding Jug’s earlier burst of laughter, what idiots they’ve both been—before finally speaking again. “I...never stopped loving you, Jug. I don’t think I _can._” 

“You’ve said that before,” Jughead says, a faraway look in his eyes. 

Betty nods, shaking her head and grinning wistfully as she imagines that white crop top and red bandana on her youthful, sixteen-year-old body. “I meant it then and I mean it now,” she says softly, reaching forward and—bravely, gently—cupping Jughead’s chin. “Nothing has changed. Not for me.”

“Betty,” Jughead says, and with the shakiness in his voice, the hopeful tenderness in his eyes, Betty swears they could be back in the old Jones trailer after the Jubilee. “I’m so hopelessly in love with you and I always will be.”

They close the distance between them at the same time, faces practically smashing together as their lips finally meet for the first time in seven long years. Betty threads her hands through Jughead’s hair as she greedily pushes and pulls at his mouth, unable to get enough of his heat, his lips on her own. Jughead’s hands roam all over Betty’s back, seemingly incapable of pulling her body as close as he wants it. They’re both breathing shakily, laughing between kisses, everything about the exchange a drawn-out, messy, _finally finally finally _that they can both feel deep in their bones.

The little roach of a joint is long forgotten as Jughead sets Betty down on the towel and covers her body with his own, staring down at her blown-out eyes and sun-kissed skin before taking her lips again in a deep kiss that has her moaning into his mouth.

* * *

Kevin sits at one end of the table in the packed diner spot Veronica can never get enough of, waiting for his friends to finish their distracted chatter and answer his question.

He finally clears his throat loudly. “Children,” he says, making Joaquin giggle into his coffee at his right side.

“Yes, Kevin?” Archie says, looking up at his friend with a guilty expression on his face. 

“I’ll repeat myself: who bets that Betty and Jughead are currently making sweet, sweet love at the beach house as we speak?”

“I’ll put down $10 on them fucking at _some point _before we return to the beach house,” Joaquin counters, pulling a crisp bill out of his wallet. “Those two have been making sexy heart eyes at each other all weekend.”

Reggie nods enthusiastically, putting his own $20 bill into the center of the table to join Joaquin’s $10 and Kevin’s $20. 

Veronica shakes her head though she laughs. “Betty is my best friend, so I can’t participate,” she says, flipping her hair. “But I can’t say I don’t agree, Joaquin.”

“They just need to get over themselves and get back together already,” Josie agrees, rolling her eyes and throwing a $5 bill onto the pile.

“Yeah, aren’t they, like, soulmates?” Reggie says, looking at Veronica as if she’s the expert on the matter.

Veronica smiles, meeting Archie’s eager grin across the table. “Hard to say, Reginald. But I’ve always thought so.”

* * *

Back at Lodge Lodge, Betty and Jughead have finally made it vertical again, though they haven’t quite made it into the beach house—Jughead currently has Betty pressed up against the sliding glass door as he sucks a hickey into her neck. (Between finally stumbling to their feet on the beach and making their way onto the patio, they’d stopped a good three times to make out, unable to get enough of what they’d been missing.)

Betty moans. “Jug,” she whispers, giggling, as her hands swipe desperately at his hair, his shoulder, anything to grab onto.

“Yeah, Betts?” Jughead whispers into her neck and she sighs, holding her head back. 

“Take me upstairs,” she whines and Jughead finally obliges, sliding open the door and rushing across the house hand in hand, hoisting Betty into his arms as they reach the base of the staircase. Betty laughs, her legs easily tightening around Jughead’s waist. She kisses him deeply, stopping him in his tracks for a moment, before peppering kisses down his neck as he carries her up the stairs and toward the room they’ve been sharing.

Betty feels giddy and she vaguely recalls the sounds of Kevin and various lovers, Archie and Veronica, even Reggie and Josie and Joaquin on this trip, giggling as they rushed down the halls of this absurd, large, but undeniably romantic beach house. The very noise used to sound bitter to her, just a reminder of what she couldn’t have. But now, as Jughead finally kicks open the door to the Teal Room and practically throws a breathless Betty onto the bed, the giggle that comes out of her mouth makes her feel nothing but free.

Jughead tries to catch his breath, hovering above her with his hands pinned on either side of Betty’s shoulders. Still wearing a tank top and sleep shorts, she smiles up at him, her hair messy from their tussle on the beach. 

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispers. “I missed you so much.” He leans down and kisses her gently on each cheek and Betty’s eyes float closed. Jughead presses kisses to the tip of her nose, her chin, her collarbone, each shoulder, before returning to her lips. 

Betty takes Jughead’s face in her hands and looks resolutely into his eyes. “I missed everything about you,” she says. “But I would’ve missed you even more if I’d realized that you’d gotten even sexier.” She tugs at his t-shirt, raising her eyebrows as he smirks and pulls the top off with some half-hearted help from Betty.

“Your turn,” he whispers, leaning down to kiss Betty. As he pulls back, she immediately raises her arms to help Jughead remove her flimsy top. He forgets to breathe when he realizes she isn’t wearing a bra underneath, that somehow her breasts have grown fuller, even more perfect as when they were teenagers. She blushes under his gaze as she watches him palm her breasts in his hands, flicking gently at each nipple to elicit a whine from Betty.

“Jug,” Betty says and he turns his attention back to her face, his eyes burning with desire as he takes in her flushed cheeks. She brings her hand to his, where he’s still cupping her tits. “I missed the way you used to touch me,” she says lowly, biting her lip, maintaining eye contact. “Every night I would touch myself, pretending it was you.”

Internally, Jughead feels something akin to relief even in the midst of how incredibly turned-on he is. It’s just so fucking relieving to know that they’re still _them_, that within a half hour of kissing Betty again she’s already talking dirty to him, slipping back into the intimacy they’d created together all those years ago—in the old trailer, in the bedroom that was once Betty’s, turned Jughead’s, and then turned _theirs_.

“I touched myself too,” he says, punctuating each word with a flick at Betty’s nipples to her little gasps. “Every. Fucking. Night.” 

Betty moans at his words. “I would ride my vibrator and wish it was you,” she whispers as he kisses her neck and continues to palm her breasts before trailing kisses downwards.

“What did you think about?” Jughead whispers from where his mouth now hovers over her tits. He takes one nipple in his mouth as Betty moans.

“That,” she cries out. 

Jughead slides a single finger down Betty’s bare chest and down her stomach, inching closer and closer to where Betty can feel her desire throbbing. “What about..._this_?” Jughead whispers, licking at her nipple at the same time he swipes across her slit with his finger. _How is she so wet already?_

Betty cries out. “_Fuck._ Yes. Just like that.”

Jughead grins at the praise. An eighteen-year-old version of him would’ve taken his time teasing an eighteen-year-old Betty, making careful swipes and passes until she was crying out for him to make her come. But that Jughead was cocky, naive. He didn’t know what it felt like to go without the gentle touch of Betty Cooper for so many years. Right now, all he wants is to make Betty feel good, to remind her of how much he loves her and wants her, how he always has and always will.

Jughead scoots himself up enough for he and Betty’s mouths to meet, greedily sharing open-mouthed kisses before slipping a finger into her pussy and smiling into the kiss as she moans into his mouth. 

“Jug,” she breathes. “Fuck _yes_.”

“Every night when I thought about you in bed, in the shower,” Jughead says, pumping his finger in and out as Betty whines. “I would think about everything we used to do, of course, but also everything we never got a chance to do. All the dirty fantasies, all the ways we had left to make each other come…”

Betty moans at his words. “Oh my God,” she says. “So did I.” Her eyes widen, watching a grinning Jughead tease her clit as he trails kisses back down Betty’s body. He can feel her shaking underneath him. He noses his way between Betty’s thighs, which she immediately opens even further to him. 

“I missed you so much,” he whispers again to Betty’s moan before finally plunging his tongue into her pussy, tasting again the unmistakable sweetness of Betty Cooper. Betty’s hand fists in his hair as he continues pumping his fingers.

“Fuck!” Betty screams and he can feel her tightening around his fingers. “Oh my God, I’m so close, don’t stop.” He laps at her clit and curls his finger again inside her and she’s bucking around him so hard he can tell she’s coming. And then, Betty lets out one of her trademark loud screams, the ones he used to have to cover her mouth to conceal in the Jones-Cooper house, the ones he found incredibly sexy to let her ride out in the seedy motels they fucked in on their senior year summer road trips. He watches the look of total pleasure wash over Betty’s face as he fingers her through the orgasm and then finally stills his movements.

He leans down to give Betty a gentle kiss and she smiles lazily up at him. “Holy shit,” she whispers, grabbing his neck and pulling him down for a harder kiss. “That was so fucking good, Jug. I...have never come that hard on my own.” She blushes and pulls herself up onto her elbows as Jughead watches her, his eyes lazy with desire and happiness. 

“Can I return the favor?” she asks, cocking her head to the side seductively and reaching forward as if to grab for his incredibly erect dick, but he meets her hand with his own and covers it gently.

“I won’t last if you do that,” he whispers. “I want to come inside you the first time we’re together again.”

She closes the gap between them to kiss him again. “Do you...have a condom with you?” 

Jughead shakes his head frantically. He’s actually truly unsure when he’d last purchased condoms. Probably the last time Betty had come to visit him at Northwestern. “Do you?” Jughead says, wincing when he realizes he’s not sure he wants to know the answer.

She laughs heartily. “Jughead, now is probably a good time to admit to you that this will be the first time I’ve had sex since...well, Halloween seven years ago.”

Jughead’s eyes light up, which surprises Betty. The grin that splits across his face as he threads his hands through Betty’s hair tells her everything. “You...too?” Betty finally says, a smile crossing her own face at the realization. “You never slept with anyone else?”

Jughead shakes his head. “I never wanted to,” he says. “I went on a few coerced dates over the years, but no one else ever did it for me. You?”

“Same,” Betty says, smiling up at him. “I tried a little too, but no one got past a kiss. I bought a really powerful vibrator, and implied a lot of stuff to Kevin and Veronica to keep them off my back.” She winces. “And I assume, by extension, Archie.”

Jughead laughs. “So they don’t realize you haven’t had sex in seven years?”

Betty throws her hands up in the air and makes an “oops!” face and Jughead bursts out laughing. “You’re my favorite, Betty Cooper.” He leans in and places a sloppy kiss on her mouth. “For the record, I, too, have implied things over the years to keep both Archie and Sweet Pea off _my _back,” Jughead says when he pulls back.

Betty laughs. “Wow, look at us.”

“More secrets we had to keep, huh?” Jughead says. 

“Well, hopefully this will be our last one,” Betty says. Jughead cocks his head to the side, confused, and Betty laughs before explaining, “That we’re gonna have to raid the other couples’ rooms for condoms now. There’s no way we’re ever telling them about this.”

Jughead laughs, his head hitting the pillow as Betty tackles him and hooks her pinky through his own. “Pinky promise, we’re taking this secret to the grave?”

Jughead leans down to kiss her pinky. “Absolutely.”

They make out languidly, unsure who even started the transition from pinky kiss back to heated mouth on mouth. They’re just so drawn to each other, every sexual instinct they’d had since laying eyes on each other two days earlier now given permission to be unleashed. 

“Jug,” Betty whines, leaning back in Jughead’s lap as he begins working his tongue between her tits again. “We really need to get those condoms.”

Jughead finally pulls back, laughing. “Fair point, let’s get this over with.”

They both quickly shove underwear and t-shirts back on. “There’s no way they’re back yet,” Jughead assures Betty as he watches her search the room for her sleep shorts in vain.

Betty grins at him, winking as she struts past him into the hallway. “You did always bring out the bad girl in me, huh, Jug?” she teases and he laughs, running after her playfully and bringing his arm around her when he catches up.

“Now, whose room should we try first?” he asks as they stop in the center of the hallway, Jughead ready to follow Betty’s lead. She knows the mysteries of Lodge Lodge much more intimately than him, after all. 

Betty shrugs. “Let’s see what Reggie and Josie have,” she finally says, a mischievous look in her eyes that makes Jughead grin. “Just because they pissed me off by getting back together before us.”

Jughead laughs, following Betty as she pushes the door open. “Now that’s the sort of pettiness I can appreciate, Betty,” Jughead says, his stomach warming at Betty’s words, at the relieving knowledge that they really had both wanted to get back together, that it wasn’t just him who had been waiting for the stars to align. “Now, let me guess,” he says as he surveys the messy bedroom where Reggie and Josie have been sleeping. “The Yellow Room?”

“Close,” Betty says, turning over a couple of haphazardly-thrown pieces of clothes in search of condoms. “The Gold Room,” she says in an exaggerated tone that makes Jughead laugh.

“Ah-ha!” Jughead says, stooping down to pick up a box of Trojans. He shakes the box to find it empty. “Seriously?” he says as Betty giggles from where she’s searching one of the nightstands. 

“Are we really gonna have to try another room?” Betty sets her hands on her hips. The huff she lets out as she bites her lip in frustration turns Jughead on more than she could imagine.

Jughead moves across the room to take her in his arms. “I think Veronica and Archie owe us more than a few condoms, anyway.”

Betty laughs, remembering the too-frequent instances in their senior year of high school when Archie had sent Veronica next door to beg Betty and Jughead for condoms because they’d run out. “You’re so right,” Betty agrees, grabbing Jughead’s hand and leading him to the end of the hall. 

“The Purple Room?” Jughead guesses as Betty bursts through the door of a much-tidier room. 

“What other room would Veronica insist on staying in?” Betty counters as she makes a beeline for the nightstand holding Veronica’s reading glasses. “Ah-ha!” She triumphantly holds up a box of condoms, shaking it to hear the telltale sign of wrappers rattling against the box.

Jughead grins and pumps his fist in victory. “Better grab a couple, Betts.” Betty’s eyes grow dark with desire again as they lock eyes. 

“Let’s get back to the Teal Room,” she says breathlessly, contraband condoms in hand.

Jughead locks the door behind them and shoves his shirt off, watching as across the room Betty hastily removes her own clothes. They land horizontal in bed again, Betty throwing the condoms to the nightstand as she fists her hands in Jughead’s hair and wraps her legs around Jughead hovering above her. When their lips meet again, Jughead reaches his hand down and teases her clit, finding her still wet despite their brief contraceptive-finding mission. 

“Hey,” he says softly, looking down at her. “I love you.”

“I love you so much,” she whispers back, kissing his cheek. “Now fuck me, Jug. I _need_ you.”

Betty is giddy, cheeks impossibly flushed, as she watches Jughead unwrap the condom and roll it down his dick. For so many years, she’d felt this sense of shame for still being so stuck on her first love, but she knows now that she was right all along. He is the only place, the only person for her. There’s no one else who has ever felt like this, like when they’re together everything has fallen into place.

Jughead cups Betty’s face in his hands, giving her a long and deep kiss as he positions himself above her again. She reciprocates eagerly, moaning as Jughead reaches down to finger her again, setting a nice rhythm that has Betty whining before quickly removing his hand. He gives her another, hastier kiss as he lines himself up at her entrance. “You ready?”

“Oh, I’ve _been_ ready,” she jokes cheekily, reaching up and kissing him hard as he finally pushes into her, a giggle turning into a heavy moan at the friction. 

“_Fuck_,” Jughead breathes as he starts to move. _She feels so good. _

As he begins to reach a steady rhythm pumping in and out of her, rubbing alternately at her clit like he knows she likes, the room is filled only with the slap of skin, moans and sighs, whispered “I love you’s” they both can’t help but repeat when he finally comes inside her again.

* * *

When she returns from peeing, Betty stands against the bathroom door-frame, a guilty grin on her face as she mentions one last pre-rolled joint she has waiting in the very bottom of her bag. It makes Jughead roll over on his side, the dopey grin already plastered on his face only amplified by this information. “Betty Cooper, you dirty little stoner.”

Betty smiles, wiggling her still-naked ass in his direction as she stalks past the bed toward her bag to retrieve said joint. “And yet, I’m a _successful _little stoner, am I not?”

She was always going to convince him. 

Only five minutes later, they sit on the patio lazily smiling at each other, Betty braless in a tank top and underwear and Jughead in only boxers. The entire scene reminds Jughead of the best, most rebellious parts of their high school days, of all the times when Betty and Jughead seemed to be the only one capable of getting the other fully out of their shell. As Betty takes her first pull on the joint, Jughead knows he can’t imagine his life without Betty in it ever again.

He’s somehow not nervous anymore, it comes tumbling out of his mouth: “Should we talk about what all this means for us, Betty? Because I know what it means for me.”

Betty raises her eyebrow at how readily he offers himself up to her. “What does it mean?” she says, too curious and giddy not to take the bait.

Jughead rests the joint on the ashtray and leans forward to take Betty’s hand in his. “I want to be with you. Now, tomorrow, ten years from now, forever.” Betty leans forward to crash her lips into Jughead’s before he can continue, and he smiles into the kiss. 

“I love you,” Betty says, her eyes shining, when they finally pull apart. She relights the joint and smokes it thoughtfully. “All I want is to be with you too.”

Jughead grins. Although he can tell she feels the same way, verbal confirmation never ceases to settle his racing heart. “Honestly, if I didn’t currently live with a bunch of Craigslist randos, I’d ask you to move in with me right now.”

Betty tips her head back and laughs before passing the joint to Jughead. “I know it’s not really our style, but shouldn’t we at least _try _to take it slow this time?”

Jughead shrugs. “When have we ever done anything according to other people’s rules?” he counters and she nods in agreement. 

Truthfully, Betty feels the same way as Jughead. She’d been silently wondering how soon she could convince Joaquin and Kevin to let Jughead move into her room. But another, more sensible part of her feels that the more “adult” thing for them to do is to date for awhile before taking that leap. 

It’s a beautiful thing, Jughead thinks as he breathes a hit out and turns his attention toward the early afternoon sunshine radiating across the Lodges’ private beach, that he and Betty fit together like this. The conversation has none of the hysteria or paranoia of their early relationship roadblocks. They’d already stamped out that insecurity and fear sophomore year. The thought makes him shudder but it also makes him grateful, that those unfortunate experiences built such a foundational strength between them. That, even after seven long years, they’re able to find each other again and so seamlessly fall back into step. 

“Being with you this weekend feels like coming home,” Jughead finally says. It took him a minute to find the words, but that simple sentence gets to the heart of it. 

Betty nods, a tear leaking out of the corner of her eye as she takes the joint from Jughead. “You’ve always had a way with words, Jughead Jones,” she finally says, a little choked up. “I’ve felt the same way all weekend.”

“Living with other people has just never felt the same,” Jughead says. “Not the way it did when the two of us lived together. Not even when we lived with...”

“—Our families?” Betty supplies, and he nods. 

Even when Jughead had stayed at home over the holidays with FP and Jellybean, the house on Elm Street hadn’t felt like a home the way it had when Betty lived there. She rounded out their family, providing her tinkling laugh and delicious food, intelligent, kind insights but also harsh insults for their enemies. JB still talked about Betty often, missing the closest person she’d ever had to an older sister. Jughead had always remained silent, not wanting to get JB’s hopes up even as he quietly worked his way back to Betty. 

“You never found Polly or Alice again, right?” Jughead suddenly blurts out, realizing the topic of their siblings wasn’t exactly a topic they’d broached yet. However, he’d always figured if the Farmies resurfaced, Archie would tell him. 

Betty shakes her head sadly. “Never. My family has felt incomplete for awhile now, but not because of them,” she says. “I have Archie, Veronica, Kevin, Joaquin. But something was always missing. I knew it was you, but I was too scared to tell anyone else.”

Jughead smiles sadly and grabs her hand, stroking her palm as Betty smiles back appreciatively. “But living with Kevin and Joaquin?” Betty continues. “It really is the closest I’ve ever felt to living in a true home since you. They make me feel so loved and protected. And it’s so wonderful to see how much they care about each other.” She pauses to take a hit and he wonders if it’s anxiety that causes her to avert her eyes when she blows out smoke and adds, “Maybe I can convince them to let you move in someday.”

Jughead nods. “We can go as slow as you want, Betty,” he says, pausing before saying: “Though, there is something more I want to tell you. I would’ve told you earlier, but we sort of…”

“Jumped each other?” Betty provides, smiling guiltily. “Not that I’m complaining,” she adds suggestively to Jughead’s laugh, passing the joint back. “But I thought you said there were no more secrets.”

Jughead sighs. “Well, this is a secret only because it’s meant for just you and me,” he explains, and Betty furrows her brow in confusion.

“I, um...listen, when we broke up, I was devastated. All I could think about was how to get back to you. And so...I wrote a plan.” Betty watches him with shock and anticipation as he continues. “I can show you later, I bring the journal with me...everywhere.” He blushes as Betty grins even wider. “My entire undergrad, my entire postgrad too, really...has been spent following this plan, trying to get to New York. Trying to get back to you.”

Betty’s eyes are filled with tears before he finishes. She puts out the joint and jumps into Jughead’s lap, taking his face in her hands and kissing him deeply as he pulls at her ponytail, grounding him in this reality. 

When she finally pulls back, hot breath on his neck, she whispers. “Later you’re showing me that journal. But right now, I need you to take me upstairs and fuck me.”

“God, I love you,” Jughead groans, grabbing Betty’s ass and lifting her into his arms as he stands. 

“I told you we needed at least a couple condoms,” he whispers into her ear as they start up the ornate staircase again.

* * *

Betty appreciates her former self for choosing a relatively quiet sound for the 4:00 PM “proposal prep” alarm she’d set that morning. The gentle, metallic tinkling stirs Betty and Jughead from where they lay passed out naked in each other’s arms. 

“We fell asleep,” Jughead murmurs sleepily, nuzzling in closer to Betty.

Betty grins. Since they’d finally kissed, Jughead can’t seem to get close enough to Betty and it’s making her blush all over. _I missed this._ “Well, having sex for the first time in seven years…” Betty starts.

“Twice,” Jughead says, cutting her off with a smirk.

“Yes, twice in a row—” Betty agrees, leaning forward to kiss him. “—makes us sleepy.” Betty giggles and snuggles back into him for a few seconds before bolting back up in bed.

“What?” Jughead says, bolting up next to her, now fully awake. If there’s anything he and Betty are no stranger to, it’s being thrust suddenly into threatening situations.

“That was the alarm I set this morning,” Betty explains, speaking quickly. “It means we have only thirty minutes to get to the restaurant to meet Archie at the time he asked us to bring the ring.”

Jughead’s eyes widen. “Damn, we were really _sleeping_, huh?”

Betty can’t help but smirk a little at that, remembering how hot both rounds of sex had been and almost wishing they didn’t have to leave this room. “Clearly we tired each other out,” she says suggestively, leaning forward to kiss him again as he wraps his arms around her shoulders and brings her closer.

They pull back after a couple minutes, both their eyes slowly opening before they remember again the urgency of their situation. “How far is this restaurant we’re meeting Archie at?” Jughead tries, hoping for a five-minute-drive situation. 

Betty frowns and shakes her head, as if she can read his mind. “Easily a twenty-minute drive.”

Jughead sighs deeply as Betty giggles. “You shower first since you take less time?” Betty suggests, and they spring into action. As Jughead grabs a towel and runs into the bathroom, Betty wonders if any of their friends came back to the beach house while they were sleeping. They’d been careful enough to lock the door the second time they’d returned to the bedroom, so there’s no way they’d been discovered…not that it was necessarily a secret, but that was hardly the way Betty wanted to tell all their best friends that they were back together after a seven-year hiatus of apparently completely mutual pining. Betty’s stomach still warms at the thought.

She finally gets out of bed and searches the floor for her phone, discarded along with various articles of clothing. Betty groans when she finally finds it only to see a bunch of text messages staring back at her from the lock screen. 

1:00 PM

**VERONICA: **hey girl! we’re headed back to the beach house to freshen up and then heading back out! lmk if you wanna come with! 

1:45 PM

**VERONICA:** you are very mysterious today, B. so me & Josie are going on a shopping adventure, text me if you wanna join us & ill send our location. i think the boys are going surfing or something

1:46 PM

**VERONICA:** oh and don’t think you’re getting out of telling me EVERYTHING

1:51 PM

**KEVIN: **;) ;) ;) details later bish

1:52 PM

**KEVIN: **Ugh and Joaquin’s yelling at me to tell you that we left our car for you to get to the restaurant

Betty shakes her head, biting her lip and smiling. Her friends are crazy, but she loves them. After all, they’d let her keep her secrets over the years without question. Maybe they’d known—or at the very least suspected—that she harbored feelings for Jughead all these years. But if they did, they never said anything, and for that Betty is grateful. 

She breathes in deep, remembering that her best friends are about to get engaged. She pulls out the floral, button-down green dress she’d picked out for the night of the proposal. She’s just laying it out on the bed when Jughead emerges from the bathroom drying himself off with a towel. 

“Impressively quick shower,” Betty says, ogling him appreciatively.

“Like what you see, Cooper?” he flirts back.

“Everything is going according to plan, by the way,” she says as she gathers up a fresh pair of underwear.

Jughead crosses the room toward the dresser. “Veronica’s off with Josie and she thinks Archie and co are surfing?”

“Bingo,” Betty says as she heads into the bathroom herself. “He may just pull this one off.” 

Betty speeds through her shower, resisting the urge to get lost in memories of their incredibly sexy and romantic afternoon together. She quickly towels off and emerges back into the room to find a half-dressed Jughead scrambling around in his boxers desperately searching for something.

“Where’s the ring?” he says breathlessly, turning toward Betty.

Betty laughs, letting her towel drop to the floor and crossing the room toward her gold clutch, perfectly picked out for the night of the proposal, smugly satisfied to find Jughead’s eyes watching her every move. She pulls the ring out of the clutch and presents it to Jughead with a single raised eyebrow. Jughead smiles in relief, pulling a naked Betty to him by the shoulders and giving her a long kiss. 

Betty pulls back. “Now, let’s get dressed so we can help our best friends get engaged.”

“Oh, yeah, that little thing,” Jughead jokes as they disentangle, Jughead throwing on dress pants. Betty steps into her dress and begins buttoning it up, biting her lip when she spots Jughead fastening suspenders over his soft blue dress shirt. She can’t wait to take that off him again later.

He looks up and locks eyes with her, smirking immediately as if he knows exactly what she’s thinking. “Later,” he promises. 

Betty stoops down and rummages through her purse, taking a wallet, lipstick, concealer, and mascara out of her purse and transferring it to the clutch, double-checking that the ring is safely returned to its spot. “Okay,” she says, grabbing a comb and running it through her hair quickly. “I think I’m ready, are you ready?”

Jughead holds his hand out to hers. “Let’s do this.”

Betty finds Kevin’s keys waiting for them on the kitchen table. In the car, Jughead rides in the passenger seat while Betty drives the path to a restaurant where she’s been countless times.

“This is Veronica’s favorite restaurant on the Cape, you know,” she says, glancing briefly over at Jughead, who smiles. “She always makes us go on the last night we spend here, so she won’t even suspect a thing. Of course, she doesn’t usually reserve a whole dining room, but she didn’t know that the restaurant was in on Archie’s plan when they took her reservation for eight.”

Jughead laughs. “Archie really did make a perfect plan,” he says, pure appreciation for his best friend in his voice.

“He always does when it comes to Veronica, doesn’t he?” Betty says, smiling as she drives.

Jughead watches her. After a silence he murmurs, “You’re so beautiful.”

Betty blushes, shaking her head. “Damn, you already got laid,” she jokes. 

“Sorry, it’s gonna be like this for awhile until I get used to you again,” Jughead says back in a joking tone and shrugging. “I don’t make the rules.”

Betty bursts out laughing. When it dies down, she has the sudden realization that with every mile she drives, the little bubble Betty and Jughead have been in since they kissed that morning is getting closer and closer to bursting. 

“Um...Jug? What should we do about like...everyone else and us? Like, should we tell them we got back together?”

Jughead sighs, running his hand through his damp hair. “I honestly don’t know what we should do,” he says. “I was thinking about it in the shower. I mean, it just seems like a...weird place to announce it.”

“Exactly,” Betty says. “Like, I don’t want to overshadow their proposal in any way.”

“But also,” Jughead says, clearing his throat. “It’s come to my attention that I’m incapable of keeping my hands off you.” He pauses before adding, “Present time excluded, as ‘one of us is operating heavy machinery’ is one of my _very few_ exceptions to that rule.”

“Happy to hear it,” Betty says, laughing heartily.

They sit in a thoughtful silence for a minute or so. “Well, how about this?” Betty says when she finally speaks again. “Let’s not like...announce anything. We don’t have to confirm any official relationship status with anyone tonight. But, we don’t have to hide it either. People can think what they want tonight and tomorrow, when the energy isn’t 100% focused on the proposal, we tell them.”

Jughead nods. “Sounds good. Apparently all of them thought we were getting back together before we actually did anyway,” he runs his hands nervously through his hair again. “Reggie and Archie both said things to me about you yesterday when I was off with them in my straight boy quarantine.”

Betty gasps. “Josie and Veronica did nothingbut grill me about you in _my _girl quarantine!”

Jughead rolls down the windows so the breeze can dry their wet hair and their laughter rings down the highway as they head toward their best friends’ engagement.

* * *

When Betty and Jughead finally burst in the door of the restaurant and are pointed in the direction of Archie’s reserved table by the hostess, they’re exactly 35 minutes late. Archie stands up from his table when they arrive, shooting his best friends a knowing grin.

“So sorry we’re late, Archie,” Betty says breathlessly, throwing her purse down on one of the chairs and rushing to pull out her hand mirror. She needs to fix her damp hair and freshen her face, not having had time to style or apply makeup.

“You two have been MIA all day,” Archie says pointedly, looking Jughead up and down and glancing at Betty as she hastily applies make-up. Jughead glances at his dress pants and realizes he could have definitely benefited from the use of an iron. _Oops._

“Please tell me you didn’t forget the ring,” Archie adds and Betty shakes her head, snapping her mirror closed. 

“You disappoint me, Arch,” she says, pulling the velvet box out of her clutch and handing it over to him. “You really think your two oldest friends would fail you?” She exaggeratedly points between herself and Jughead.

Jughead joins in, tsking. “For shame, Archie.”

Betty surveys the room with approval; the restaurant had definitely given Archie their biggest dining room for the night. The table is spectacularly decorated with dainty floral arrangements and perfectly-folded matching napkins. Betty knows this means Archie definitely dropped the Lodge name when he booked. 

Betty catches Jughead watching her through half-lidded eyes and smirks at him before returning her gaze to Archie. “You need help with anything, Arch?”

Archie folds his arms across his chest and fixes Betty and Jughead with a pensive stare. “Yeah,” he says after a silence, pointing at a stack of paper on the table. “Will you put these place-cards at everyone’s seat according to the seating chart?”

Jughead snorts. “Are you kidding me?” 

Betty not-so-subtly shoves his arm in an attempt to silence him. “Veronica thinks this is just a fancy dinner for the last night of our trip,” she reminds him.

Jughead nods, trying not to grin too hard at how sexy he finds it when Betty puts him in his place. “Sorry, sorry, I forgot.” He starts to gather up the letter-pressed name tags from the table while Betty surveys the seating chart, watching her apprehensively as if waiting for his marching orders.

Archie shakes his head, amused, and finally asks them straight out, in a gentle voice, “You two are back together, aren’t you?”

Betty whips her head around to stare at Archie, eyes wide and mouth gaping open, whereas Jughead just folds his arms across his chest and shoots Archie a sheepish, slightly smug grin. Betty turns to Jughead, “Well, so much for that.”

Jughead pulls Betty to him, resting his arm firmly around her shoulders. “We were gonna wait to tell everyone till tomorrow,” he explains softly.

“Didn’t want to overshadow your proposal,” Betty adds. 

“Finally!” Archie says, pumping his fist in the air, and seemingly ignoring the thoughtful words coming out of his oldest friends’ mouths. 

“Archie, did you even hear what we said?” Betty says, slightly annoyed as Jughead laughs. 

“Look, that’s very polite of you, Betty, seriously. And I appreciate you guys bringing me the ring in one piece, and most of all, being here for this important moment. Because you’re my best friends.”

“Aw, Arch,” Betty says.

“And I just want you two to be happy.” 

“We are,” Jughead assures him, pressing a kiss to Betty’s hair. 

“But as your best friend, there are two more things I know to be true. One: you were both absolutely miserable without each other, so this will be a relief to all of us.” Betty and Jughead laugh in agreement at that one, but let Archie finish before interjecting. 

“And two: you can ‘not say anything to anyone’ all you want,” Archie uses exaggerated air-quotes. “But you two together is unmistakable. So don’t expect anyone to buy it.”

Betty shrugs, looping her arm through Jughead’s and smiling up at him. “No more secrets, right?”

Jughead nods in agreement, pressing a tender kiss to the back of her hand. Archie rolls his eyes as he adjusts his cufflinks. “You two are so full of it.”

* * *

_Of all the plans that came to fruition that fated weekend on Cape Cod, perhaps the one that most deserved to fall into place was the one Archie made to propose to Veronica. And thankfully, it did._

Betty will write these words in her journal the next day. She’ll look back on them—and this weekend—with fondness for years to come. 

But now, her heart is beating fast. Because Josie just texted her that she and Veronica are only five minutes away from the restaurant. Gulping, Betty slips her phone into her clutch and rushes across the restaurant to where Archie is sipping a beer and joking with Kevin and Jughead at the table. 

“Arch,” Betty says when she reaches them, Jughead easily resting a hand on the small of her back. “She’s five minutes away.”

Archie nods, adjusting his tie and shaking his shoulders out.

“How are you feeling?” Jughead asks, genuine care in his eyes.

Archie smiles at his friends. “Excited. Ready to ask Veronica to spend the rest of my life with me.”

“That’s what we like to hear!” Kevin says, raising his glass of beer to Archie’s and clinking. Across the table, where Reggie and Joaquin are lost in conversation, they both offer half-informed but enthusiastic whoops and Betty and Jughead laugh heartily at the entire scene.

Betty’s phone buzzes and she looks down at it, Jughead’s eyes also immediately drawn to the sound. Betty clears her throat. “They’re outside,” she says loudly, and everyone’s eyes widen as they scramble to get back behind the table while Archie steps in front, velvet box in hand and eyes trained on the door Veronica will soon be stepping through.

Jughead reaches over and squeezes Betty’s hand briefly as they all watch the door nervously, adrenaline pumping. They hear distant voices and the clicking sound of heels. And then, Josie walks through the door, quickly moving out of the way so that Veronica can take in Archie, standing in front of her in a much-fancier suit than she can normally get him to wear, staring at her like she’s the only person he ever wants to look at.

“Archie,” she finally says, blinking rapidly. “What’s...going on?”

Betty smiles, already feeling her eyes tear up as Archie walks toward Veronica, taking her hand before popping open the box and getting down on his knee.

Veronica shrieks, her hand flying to her mouth. “Oh my God, Archie.” 

Betty’s heart is so full as she watches her best friend’s eyes fill with tears. 

“I’m so in love with you, Ronnie,” Archie says evenly, confidently. “And we’re here with our best friends, who have been with us through thick and thin, just like we have with each other. But we always end up together in the end, right?” 

He turns slightly toward the group as Betty wipes at her eyes, from which the tears are freely falling now. Jughead reaches over and squeezes Betty's hand again, this time refusing to let go. Betty smiles down at their intertwined hands.

“I guess the point is, I wanted them to be here when I ask you this: will you marry me, Veronica Lodge? Because all I want to do is spend the rest of my life with you.”

Veronica nods rapidly, tears dripping down her face as she says, “Yes, yes, yes!” 

Kevin is the first to cheer—as Archie slides the ring on Veronica’s finger, as Veronica and Archie’s faces smash together and a predictably long makeout commences.

“Get it, Varchie!” Josie screams, Reggie’s arm held firmly around her shoulders as he whoops, and Betty and Jughead laugh, Jughead turning to help Betty wipe her tears while everyone else is distracted heckling Veronica and Archie’s “proposal-level Varchie-ness,” as Kevin blurts out.

“You doing okay, Betts?” Jughead says softly.

“I’m doing amazing,” Betty says, smiling as she uses a napkin from the table to wipe her eyes. “Just emotional.”

Jughead smiles, squeezing her hand one last time before they return to the group. Upon Archie’s request, two waiters are now hurrying into the room. “Congratulations,” one of them says, presenting a tray of champagne flutes.

Veronica beams. “Oh my God, Archiekins,” she says, her hand on her chest. “I still can’t believe it. You planned all of this? Here, at my favorite place on the Cape?”

“I absolutely did,” he says and Veronica kisses him again to all the friends’ cheering.

“I think it’s time for a toast,” Betty says once she sees that everyone has champagne in hand. “To Veronica and Archie!”

The next twenty minutes are a blur. Everyone clinks glasses and then suddenly everyone needs to be embracing, because _oh fuck, they’re engaged! _Betty relishes in the warm hug she exchanges with Veronica, pats Archie on the back when he thanks her for her help, laughs in relief in Joaquin’s embrace that he didn’t spoil the secret.

But the best part is that when they sit down at the table, Jughead makes sure he’s seated next to her, seating chart be damned. He squeezes her thigh throughout dinner, whispers in her ear, shares smirks and secret smiles and eyebrow raises—like he never plans to be anywhere else but right by her side.

* * *

Between dinner and dessert, Betty slips away to the bathroom to reapply her make-up, having cried a good portion of it off. She stands in front of the mirror dabbing at her eyes when the door opens and Veronica walks in.

“Hey, B,” Veronica says, and Betty smiles at her through the mirror.

“Hey, newly-engaged lady,” Betty chirps back.

Veronica beams. “I like the way that sounds.”

“I’m so happy for you two,” Betty says, turning to hug Veronica again. 

They both turn back to the mirror, Veronica running a hand through her hair thoughtfully. She pulls a lipstick out of her bag and then nonchalantly says, “Oh, and because I know you won’t bring it up yourself: I’m happy for you, too. You and Jughead both deserve it.”

* * *

Jughead claps Archie on the back as they all stand around drinking and waiting for the check. Josie, Kevin, and Betty are all huddled around Veronica talking about wedding details from what Jughead can gather. It seems soon to him, but what does he know. After all, he and Betty are just now rebuilding. But from what he’s felt so far today...they’re on their way to being something even greater than what they were before.

“I’m so happy for you, Arch,” Jughead says, taking a sip of the beer he just opened. It’s his second beer, so you _know_ it’s a celebration.

“You too, Jug,” Archie says, turning to look him straight in the eye. “You and Betty belong together, I’ve always thought so. Probably before you did.”

Jughead nods, gulping. “I’m so grateful to have you both in my life,” he finally says. 

Archie moves to embrace him. “We’re brothers, Jughead,” he says. “Don’t ever forget that.”

“Oh, I won’t,” Jughead says when they pull back. “I’ll also never forget kicking your ass in video games the entire time we lived together.”

“Oh really? And I’ll never forget that I can _always _beat _your _ass in drinking.” He pauses before getting a mischievous glint in his eye that makes Jughead narrow his eyes.

“Arch…”

“Let’s chug these beers.”

Jughead sighs deeply. “Okay,” he finally says. “Just this once, because you got engaged tonight.”

As Reggie catches on and begins chanting for them—“CHUG, CHUG, CHUG, CHUG!”—Jughead meets Betty’s eyes across the room. He shrugs at Betty and she blows him a kiss. 

He looks down at his beer. Should he do it? After all, Veronica and Archie’s engagement finally forced he and Betty back together. The least he could do is…

“CHUG, CHUG, CHUG, CHUG!”

“Fuck it,” he says. “To Veronica and Archie!” he yells before downing his beer as fast as he can.

* * *

When the friends finally return to the beach house, everyone yells out hurried, drunken “good-nights” before retreating to their separate rooms. Veronica and Archie shut the door to their room so quickly and dramatically that Betty can hear the lock click from the bottom of the stairs. 

Betty and Jughead take up the rear, Jughead holding Betty’s hand tightly in his as they ascend the elaborate staircase. “What are you thinking about, Betts?”

“Hmm,” Betty says, smirking. “Just all the dirty things I’m gonna do to you when we get back to our room.”

Indeed, when they reach their room moments later, Betty practically shoves Jughead against the door in her haste to get his clothes off . “I like this Betty,” he says, laughing between kisses as they make their way toward the bed. “But I think you’re forgetting something.”

Betty pauses from where she’s sucking his neck. “Yes?” she says innocently.

Jughead puts his finger under her chin so her wide green eyes meet his. “I have to show you something, remember?”

Betty’s eyes light up as she sits herself down at the end of the bed and Jughead walks quickly across the room toward his backpack, digging through it hastily in search of the black journal. His most prized possession, in which he has laid himself the most bare over the past seven years, is finally going to be seen by the only person he would ever show it to.

Betty watches him closely, tingling with anticipation as he sits down beside her and presents her with the notebook. “So, the plan’s in the front,” Jughead says, handing it to Betty and watching her slowly open it and take in his cramped, familiar handwriting. “But I added thoughts about you over the years, things I didn’t want to forget to tell you when we finally met again, stuff like that.”

Betty’s eyes fill with tears as she reads the plan Jughead had described earlier, smoothing her fingers over the same penstrokes he’d memorized. She flips through the notebook to find each page almost completely filled with his scribbled thoughts and doodles.

She clears her throat, wiping her eyes. “There are only a few blank pages left,” she notices. 

“We found each other just in the nick of time, huh?” Jughead jokes, cupping her face gently with his hand.

Betty laughs, wiping another stubborn tear. “I’m gonna read this thing a million times, I already know it,” Betty says, turning away from him to place the journal gently on the nightstand. “But right now…”

Betty doesn’t finish the sentence, instead pushing him back onto the bed, shoving off her shirt as she climbs on top of him, Jughead’s arms eagerly reaching out to grab onto her. 

(Neither of them have trouble getting to sleep that night.)

* * *

In the morning, Betty and Jughead venture downstairs at 9 AM to the surprising sight of Veronica and Archie lounging at the kitchen table with a pot of coffee brewed and a platter of fancy-looking pastries sitting in front of them.

“Good morning!” Veronica chirps happily. Archie smiles, kissing Veronica’s cheek and throwing an arm around her shoulder.

Betty shrieks, holding her hand to her heart. “Wow, you guys scared me. Jug and I thought we were the first ones awake again.”

Veronica and Archie laugh. “You two look cozy,” Archie says, pointing to Jughead’s hand resting on the small of Betty’s back.

Betty blushes. “Same with you two, _fiancées_,” she says, smiling as Veronica and Archie kiss again.

The morning goes by quickly, then, with Betty and Jughead and Veronica and Archie just sitting around the table laughing and catching up and eating croissants. The other two couples wake within an hour, joining them and immediately grilling Betty and Jughead, who are slightly horrified to discover the bets their friends made the day before on their behalf. 

“Who had them fucking two times?” Kevin says, looking down at the pile of money as Reggie raises his hand and claims his prize. Betty rubs her temples as Jughead massages her back soothingly and fixes Reggie with his signature broody glare.

“Speaking of fucking,” Veronica says loudly, shutting them all up. “I think Archie and I are gonna stay here for another couple days just the two of us to...celebrate.”

“So in other words, eat your pastries and get the fuck out?” Kevin translates.

“Precisely,” Veronica says, fixing her friends with her signature rich-girl smile. “Betty, I’m sure there will be no problem with Jughead hitching a ride back with you guys?” 

Jughead grins, kissing Betty’s cheek as she nods. 

They pile their bags into Kevin’s trunk a mere hour later—Veronica is really serious about getting her “proposal honeymoon” started—and Jughead can hardly believe only three and a half days have passed since he arrived at Lodge Lodge in Archie’s car.

Kevin and Joaquin argue about the playlist as Betty and Jughead strap in and immediately nestle in close to each other in the backseat. “This ride is already a huge improvement on the ride up here,” Betty murmurs as Kevin starts out of the Lodge driveway, waving to Veronica and Archie standing on the front steps watching them go.

The four friends ride in relative silence as they head through the Cape Cod back-roads leading them to Route 6. When they finally reach the highway, Joaquin clears his throat loudly. “So, kids. What should we do for dinner?”

Betty groans. “Seriously? How can you already be wondering that? We haven’t even had lunch yet!” 

Kevin laughs from the front seat, but Jughead shakes his head at Betty. “It’s never too early to wonder about dinner, Betty,” he argues.

“Well, what do you think, Jug?” Joaquin asks, turning around in the passenger seat so he’s facing him. “I mean, I assume you’ll be having dinner with us a lot more often now, right?”

Betty blushes and watches him closely. “Yes, I definitely will be,” he grins down at Betty, squeezing her shoulder. “And you can never go wrong with pizza.”

_the end _

_(for now) _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AHHHH so if that ending felt like a beginning it’s because it kind of is?! guess what?? I really enjoyed writing this little universe and I already have a few ideas for future installments! I plan to return my energy to “Exhale” for awhile so I can’t promise WHEN i’ll be posting the next one, but you can definitely expect more of these two from me in the future! Subscribe to the series if you want to keep up :-) 
> 
> And on that note, i hope this chapter met your expectations for this story! I am truly blown away by the positive feedback i’ve received, reading your comments and reblogs and seeing your kudos has truly made what was one of the hardest months of my life so much more bearable. Thanks to everyone for reading!!!!! Love y’all - Maria

**Author's Note:**

> Ah so this idea came to me in a tropey daze and of course it has the usual stonerbughead twist of weed and my ridiculous sense of humor that I hope you have all come to expect and maybe love? I JOKE.
> 
> Anyway, I promise I’m also working on Exhale Ch 14 but this idea was too good to pass up. 
> 
> Please let me know what you thought, your comments are such a beacon of light in like, the hardest year of my life. (As is writing, as is Bughead, you get the picture.)
> 
> Also, shouts out to @catthecoder @bettscoopr @bugheadfangirl @strangenightsofdaydreams for sprinting me to the end of this first chapter today! 
> 
> XOXO Maria


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